In The Beginning
by The Urban Spaceman
Summary: Even arch-angels were young once. In a time long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth, God created four powerful beings to live in Heaven and tend his terrestrial garden. United by their love for their father, eventually torn apart by their differences, each brother has a story to tell.
1. Michael

Michael

_Awakening_

Eyes opened. Green was everywhere, in hundreds of different shades which as yet did not have names. The being which had formed from the nothingness and chaos of creation looked around, at the tall green things and the short green things, and spotted other colours amongst them. Words tumbled into his head to describe the things; those which were tall and green were trees, and those which were short and green were plants. The other colours were yellow and blue and purple and red, and myriad shades between them; flowers, pretty and aromatic, bright jewels amongst the ubiquitous green.

He bent down to examine one of the plants, its trumpet-like yellow head swaying gently in the breeze atop a dark green stem. When he reached out to touch the flower, he saw his own hand, a silvery-white limb which he held up in front of his eyes, turning it to view it from all angles. When a desire to touch the flower crossed his mind again, his hand became… more. It was still silvery-white light, but it had more substance now, and he used his fingers to gently brush the soft petals of the flower, enjoying the experience, the _feeling_, of it against his skin.

A thought fell unbidden into his mind, a realisation of who he was. _I am Michael_.

Michael stood up and looked into the distance. This green… these plants… stretched as far as his eyes could see. An endless garden of trees and bushes and flowers and grass, each one a creation, just like him. _I am Michael,_ he thought to one of the plants, a beautiful purple hyacinth. It swayed gently at his words, listening, but it did not reply.

When he understood that he could use his other limbs - his legs and feet - to move, he strode forward, towards a tree, and its name trickled into his mind as knowledge. _Hello, Oak,_ he thought. _I am Michael._

But the tree did not answer, and it was too large and rigid to sway to his words as the hyacinth had. Still, Michael was not deterred. There were hundreds and thousands of plants and trees in this expansive garden, so he reasoned that somewhere there must be hundreds and thousands of beings like him, as well. He would look for them, and when he found them they would tell him their names, and they would know each other.

He walked. He had no concept of time, he did not hunger, and he did not tire. For him, those words meant nothing, and he did not even know them. He simply continued forward, looking at the plants and the trees, listening for another voice amongst them. At last he came to a great expanse of translucent dark blue, which moved fluidly and made a gentle sound that he found soothing. He was not surprised when its name fell into his mind, as if it was something he had always known but had forgotten, to be recalled only upon this first meeting. _Lake._

He stepped into the lake and felt its cool waters enveloping his skin, the light of his body illuminating the surface. When he was deep enough he stopped, and looked down. A silvery-white being looked up at him from beneath the waters of the lake, and for a brief moment he felt a happiness within him. Finally, he had found another like him. Now he wouldn't have to be alone.

_Hello!_ He thought to the one beneath the water. _My name is Michael._

There was no response. The being remained silent. Perhaps, he thought, it could not reply whilst it was enveloped within the lake's waters. Perhaps it needed to be up here, with him, in the place of the plants and the trees.

He reached down with his arms, feeling for the other being, and it reached back, an expression of hope on its face as their hands came close to touching. Down and down he reached, stretching his limbs to their full extent, groping desperately in the water for the other being. But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how far he stretched his arms, he couldn't touch the other. Feeling despair, he finally stood up, and he saw the other being pull away from him, sinking deeper into the water. There was disappointment and loss expressed in its silver eyes, an echo of his own emotion.

_Please come back_, he thought to it. He reached down with just one hand, slowly moving closer to the being, and it too extended a hand, slowly moving closer to him. At that moment, Michael understood. The being he saw within the waters of the lake was not real; it was merely his own reflection taunting him with its presence. With one last look at his own bright form, he left the water and returned to the garden, where at least the plants and the trees were real, even if they only listened and did not speak.

Though he did not tire, constantly walking became tiresome. He had walked far since he had awoken, and had seen many plants, many trees, none of which could respond to his offer of friendship. When he came at last to a massive redwood tree he sat down beside it, and waited. Perhaps the other beings like him were looking for him, but they kept missing each other because they were on the move. Perhaps if he adopted a more sedentary approach the others would find him here.

For a long time he waited, with only the plants and the trees for company. Sometimes he spoke to them, just to see them dance to his words, and he wondered where they, and the lake, had come from. Had they been created at the same time as him, or were they here before him?

Eventually something happened. In the distance he spied a brilliant light, and it started to move towards him. His first thought was that finally he had been found, and excitement pulsed through him. But the light kept getting bigger and brighter, until he couldn't bear to look at it. As the light rapidly approached he closed his silver eyes and turned his face away, shielding his eyes with his arm, fearful of this bright new thing.

"Look at me," a voice commanded.

"I can't," he replied. "You are too bright for me to look at. It hurts my eyes to see you."

"You can see me now," the voice said. "Trust me."

Against his better judgment, Michael opened his eyes a small fraction. Light entered them, but it was not the same burning, blinding light he had first seen. Now it was more like a warm and pulsing luminescence. Slowly he turned his head and lowered his arm fully. The bright thing was taller than he, larger, and its face flashed rapidly, fluidly changing its appearance. Michael had no names for the faces it took, but he understood that this thing… this being… was wearing the face of Everything.

"Do you know who you are?" the being asked him.

"I am Michael," he replied. "But… who are you?"

"I am God," the being replied. "But you may call me Father. I created you, Michael."

"Why?" he asked, confused. He'd known he must have come from _somewhere_, but why would a being that could be Everything create a Michael?

"I like to create things," Father replied. He spread arms of yellow light out wide, gesturing at their surroundings. "I created all of this. Tell me… do you know what you are?"

"I… am Michael," he reiterated. It was all he knew about himself.

"That is _who_ you are, not _what_ you are," said Father. "You are my first sentient creation in a very long time. I have called your kind _angel_."

"My kind?" he asked, and felt a momentary flash of excitement. "There are more of me?"

"Not yet. I had to make you first, to make sure I got it right this time."

"I don't understand," he said. Father's words made no sense to him. What did he mean by 'got it right' and 'this time'?

"You will understand everything, in time," Father assured him. "For the moment, you are my first and only angel. If you turn out as I hope, I will make more of you. Enough to fill this place, so that you will never be alone again."

"And if I don't turn out as you hope?"

"I will make something else."

Michael did not like the sound of that. He didn't want 'something else'. He didn't want to disappoint Father, not if it meant no other angels would be created. He swore to himself that he would do whatever it took to please Father, to live up to his hopes and expectations. He would give Father no reason to doubt him, no reason to stop creating more angels. He would be an obedient and dutiful creation.

"What do you want me to do?" Michael asked his Father.

"For the moment, nothing. Awareness will come to you gradually, and you will know more. I will come to you regularly, and I will teach you. It will of course depend upon your capacity to learn."

"I look forward to learning," Michael said with conviction.

"Good," Father replied, and Michael sensed that he was pleased by his creation's response. "Now, if you've tired of sitting here talking to the plants, you may come with me. I will show you some of the things I made before you."

In his first act of obedience, Michael stood up, and followed his father through the garden.

o - o - o - o - o

_Lessons_

Monitoring the passing of time was something that Father taught to Michael, though it was more like 'reminding' than 'teaching'. Michael came to understand that his Father had created him to be aware of certain things, which he had merely to be reminded of to comprehend them fully.

The first thing Father showed to Michael was the universe. They travelled across galaxies and between them, and he became familiar with the plethora of suns which shone brightly in the cold darkness of space. The suns were bright things, brighter than Michael, but not quite as bright as Father. Each of the suns was unique in their size and composition, and no two were exactly the same. Father explained why.

"I don't like to create things which are the same," he told Michael, as they observed the collapsing of an ancient red dwarf. The death of a sun was the ultimate act of destruction, but it was an act which would ultimately fuel creation. From the star-dust of the dead star would be born a new solar system, though it would take millions upon millions of years to form. Nothing truly ended, in Father's universe. "Everything should be unique, and there should never be more than one of any something."

"So… if you create more angels, they will not be like me?" Michael asked, trying to grasp the concept of uniqueness.

"They will be as similar to you as the suns are similar to each other. But they will not be exact duplicates; they will not think quite as you do, or understand as you do, and they will differ in size, shape, appearance."

"I understand," Michael said. He didn't understand, not really, but he thought it was what Father wanted to hear.

They watched in silence as the red dwarf finally succumbed to the intense gravitational forces trying to tear it apart from within. The explosion was devastatingly fierce, a beautiful fountain of super-heated matter and anti-matter spreading itself across the cosmos.

"There is something I want to show you," Father said at last.

Father took them away from the dead star's grave, to another galaxy, far from the place where the red dwarf had exploded. It was a spiral galaxy, rotating faster at its core than at its outer edges, so that its long arms trailed slowly behind it. It was to the inner edge of one of the arms that Father took them, to a solar system containing a yellow star in its centre. There was nothing too remarkable about the system; nine planets of differing sizes orbited the sun, and there was a belt of asteroids between the fourth planet - a small rocky world - and the fifth planet - a large, hot, swirling gas giant.

"There," said Father, as they approached the third planet. It, like the fourth planet, was small and rocky, its surface littered with active volcanoes. Wide rivers of lava poured forth from high vents and tectonic rifts, igneous rocks forming wherever the lava was allowed to cool for long enough for crystals to form. "This is one of my greatest creations yet. I call it Earth," Father said.

Michael was not impressed. This molten spheroid of rock was his one of his father's best works? It was tiny, far less impressive than the sixth planet, a gas giant which had an impressive set of dust rings around it.

"I don't understand," Michael said plainly. "Why are you showing me this? It is just a planet. I've seen millions like it."

"Not like this," Father insisted. "This was my first garden. This is where the plants of Heaven came from."

"_This_? _This_ is your garden? What went wrong?"

"I had to… remake it," Father admitted. "I want you to understand something, my son. I am not perfect. I made a mistake."

"What kind of mistake?" He did not want to shame his father by asking, but his curiosity was too great to ignore.

"You are not the first sentient being I have created," Father said. "After I made the Earth the first time, I filled it with plants and trees and I created animals for it."

"Animals?" Michael asked, confused. The word was not a familiar one.

"I'll show you those later. But after I created the animals, I decided to create intelligent life-forms to live both on the Earth and in Heaven. The creatures I created, I named Leviathan, but I erred. I made them too cunning, too vicious, too greedy. There was a hunger within them, and they began to devour everything I had created, including each other. They threatened Heaven and Earth, so I was forced to intervene. I locked them away, where they can do no damage.

"There was little left of the Earth to salvage, by that point, so I started again. I wiped the slate clean and reset the Earth back to how it was, when it was first formed. That is why it looks so unimpressive and uninhabitable to you. But give it time, and this world will once again sparkle like a diamond."

Father's words explained a lot. Michael felt that he finally understood. He finally had answers to some of the questions he had not asked Father for fear of what the answers might be.

"That's why you created me alone," he said. "You wanted to be sure I would not be like your Leviathans. That I would not destroy your garden, as they did."

"Yes," Father said, radiating approval that his son had leapt to the conclusion on his own. "Eventually the Earth will become a paradise, just like Heaven. When I have finished shaping the land, once it has settled and cooled, I will create an atmosphere, and make rivers and lakes and oceans. From my garden in Heaven I will take seeds of plants and cast them onto the ground so that they can proliferate. Eventually I will create animals to make the world truly alive."

Michael dwelt on his father's words. This task, he knew, would take a long time. It might take millions of years for the Earth to settle, cool and for his father to create an atmosphere. Truly he must love this little ball of molten rock, if he was willing to invest so much time and effort into it, and for not the first time either. If the Earth was so important to his father, Michael decided, then it was important to him too.

"I would like to help," he offered.

"I hoped you would," Father replied. "There is much for me to teach you. Come, let us return to Heaven, and I'll show you how I made the plants."

o - o - o - o - o

_Brother_

Michael learnt much from God, during those first few thousand years. His father showed him how he had made plants, how to alter the laws of physics to manipulate time and space and matter, how to move instantly from one place to another, how to nudge a planet to stabilise its orbit or send it spiralling out of control, and many other things which he thought might be useful for his son to know.

The Earth continued to remain a hostile place, and though Michael was capable of walking its surface without being harmed by the blistering temperatures or toxic fumes, he preferred to stay in Heaven and watch from afar. During that time he learnt great patience; there were no animals in Heaven, though his father had explained the concept to him in great details, and he was eager to see them on the Earth.

He had grown closer to his father during their time together, and relished every moment they spent together. Father confided to him that he had been lonely for a long time, which was why he had created the Leviathans. Unfortunately they were far too violent to be allowed to roam free, and after locking them away in a place called Purgatory he'd set his mind to creating a different type of sentient being.

The being he had devised - the angel - was intended to be almost the exact opposite of the Leviathans. Starting from scratch, Father had built a being which did not need food, so that it could not hunger as the Leviathans had. Angels, Michael now knew, would never be troubled by physical needs. As beings of energy, rather than matter, they needed no sustenance, nor rest, and they would not succumb to the passage of time, as plants did and animals eventually would.

Sitting beneath his favoured redwood tree - the one where he had first met Father - Michael sensed his father's approach. He looked up from his observation of the Earth, and stared in surprise. God was not alone; there was another being with him. A being of silvery-white light with silver eyes, and wings on his back just like Michael's. Father had created a new angel? He hadn't mentioned anything about this to Michael, but Father _did_ like his secrets.

"Michael," Father said, stopping in front of him with the newcomer. "I want you to meet somebody." He gestured to the smaller angel beside him. "This is Lucifer. He is your younger brother. I made him so that you won't have to be alone when I am away, and so that you have somebody to teach, as I have taught you."

"Welcome, little brother," Michael said, stepping towards the pair.

Lucifer looked up shyly at Father, who nodded in encouragement.

"Hello Michael," Lucifer said.

"Michael, I'd like you to take good care of Lucifer," Father said, giving his youngest son a gentle push forward. "Teach him well, and care for him as I have cared for you."

Michael reached out and put his silvery hand on his brother's shoulder. "I'll teach you everything I know," he promised.

"Thank you, brother," Lucifer said happily.

"I'll leave the two of you to get to know each other," Father said. Then he disappeared.

Michael turned his eyes to Lucifer, studying his little brother. The younger angel was a little smaller than Michael, but also a little brighter. He seemed to possess none of the confusion Michael had displayed upon first waking, and so he guessed that Father had made improvements to his second son, learning from Michael's own creation.

"How much are you aware of?" Michael asked his brother. "How much do you know?"

"I know that I am called Lucifer," the younger angel replied. "And that I am your brother, and we are in Heaven. I know that God is our Father, and he made us to love him. But I don't know what these things are around us, or what exists outside Heaven."

"Don't worry, I'll show you the universe," Michael promised.

Together they left the tree, and Michael did not look back. Finally he had another angel to talk to, someone to care for and teach, as Father had cared for and taught him. Now he would never have to be alone again.


	2. Lucifer

Lucifer

_Two_

Lucifer looked down from Heaven at the small glowing ball of slowly cooling lava. The Earth was changing, little by little, year by year, but it was a terribly slow process. This planet had been one of the first things Michael had shown to him, and from the moment he had first seen it he had fallen in love with it. It wasn't the Earth _as it_ _was_ that he found so endearing, but what the Earth _would become_. A Heaven-like paradise full of plants and animals, teeming with life; his Father's big experiment.

When he became aware that he was no longer alone, he looked up from his observation and found Michael watching him.

"I thought I'd find you here," Michael said. "You just can't leave it alone, can you?" There was a hint of teasing in Michael's tone, but Lucifer knew that his brother wasn't being malicious. Their brotherly bond was close, even closer than the bond they shared with their father.

"I don't understand," Lucifer said in frustration, and not for the first time. "Why doesn't father just make the Earth habitable now? Why does he make us wait like this?"

"To teach us patience and to ensure the Earth forms perfectly," Michael replied. Lucifer accepted his brother's explanation. Michael, at times, seemed to possess an instinctive understanding of their father's motives that Lucifer just couldn't grasp.

"But why do we have to have patience? We could easily stabilise and cool the Earth ourselves. If we worked together it wouldn't take us long at all."

"No," Michael said, his voice stern. Lucifer shrank back from his brother. Michael had never been stern with him before. "I'm sorry," his elder brother said. "I didn't mean to snap at you. But Father doesn't want interference in the Earth's development, which means you and I will sit here and watch and wait, and we will do nothing to the Earth unless Father instructs us to."

Lucifer could tell his brother was hiding something, and it worried him. Michael never kept secrets. "Why are you so worried about the Earth?" he queried.

Michael looked momentarily uncomfortable, but at last he answered. "The Earth used to be different." he admitted. "It was long ago. Father had to start it over again."

The answer shocked Lucifer. The Earth hadn't always been this ball of molten rock? Why had his father or Michael never mentioned anything about this before? Why had they kept the truth from him? "What did it look like?"

"I don't know, it was before my time, but Father tells me it was not dissimilar to Heaven. It had different laws and rules, but there were plants and animals, and it was Father's greatest creation."

"Why did he destroy it?" Lucifer asked. Such an action seemed incomprehensible. If you loved something, you were supposed to do everything within your power to protect it. You weren't supposed to burn it to char.

"It's not my place to tell you that."

Lucifer reached out to his brother, placing his silver-white hand on the taller angel's shoulder. "Please, brother," he said. "Father instructed you to teach me, didn't he? I sense that whatever this is, it disturbs you, and I want to know why. I _need_ to know why. I have to understand why the thought of interfering on Earth troubles you so."

Michael gave a deep sigh as indecision flickered across his silver eyes. At last he relented; he could never resist his younger brother's pleading expression.

"We are not Father's first children," Michael explained. "Long before he created me, he made the Leviathans, and gave them free run of Heaven and Earth. But they were beasts which devoured everything Father loved, so he was forced to lock them away. Heaven was spared, but the Earth as it was could not be saved. Father started it over again."

"I see," Lucifer said, feeling a chill inside him. These 'Leviathans' did not sound pleasant, and he was glad Father had sent them away. "Is that why you don't want me interfering with the Earth?" he asked his brother. "You are worried that if I ruin Father's creation he might lock me away too?"

"Yes," Michael said calmly. "I know you are curious, Lucifer, but I want you to promise me that you won't go near the Earth until Father says so. Promise me."

"I promise," Lucifer said quickly. He didn't like the intensity in his brother's eyes. He knew that Michael had often been lonely with only Father for company, and he knew that Michael would give _anything_ not to have to be alone again. "I'll just watch it for now. I won't go nearer to it than this."

"Good." Michael gave him a warm smile. "Do you want to go and have a look at a nebula that's forming in the void between two distant galaxies?"

"Thanks, but I think I'd like to stay here a bit longer and watch the Earth," Lucifer said. Now that he knew what it had been, he found it an even more fascinating place. It didn't take much for him to imagine what it would be like in another million years.

"Alright. I'll come back later, then."

Michael disappeared, off to observe the nebula, and Lucifer turned his gaze back to the Earth. One day he would walk its surface, and it would not be a hot and toxic place, but a planet of life, spontaneity and creation. And hopefully his father would tell him what he had planned for this tiny, rocky ball in space.

o - o - o - o - o

_An artist's tools_

A gust of wind blew across the barren surface of the Earth, whirling around the two angels who stood side by side, watched by their father. God had finally deemed the Earth cool enough to begin sculpting, and he had made this first visit down to the planet with his beloved children.

"Good, Michael," said Father, in response to the eldest angel's gust of wind. He turned to his youngest son. "Now you try, Lucifer."

Lucifer narrowed his silver eyes as he concentrated on the molecules around him. The elements present were not ideal for making wind, father had informed them, but it could be done. As Lucifer concentrated he felt movement around him, and he focused even more on the desired effect. A blast of wind swept out from his celestial body, sweeping across the sharp, rocky ground with enough force to break apart several large pieces of brittle volcanic rock.

"Excellent, Lucifer!" Father said, and he felt himself glowing brightly at his father's praise.

"Yes, that was a good one," Michael agreed, showing no signs of envy over his brother's success. "I think you have a natural skill for this."

Lucifer smiled his thanks for his brother's compliment. So far, this was one of the happiest days of his life. Finally his father had brought them to the Earth, and was teaching them what they would need to know to begin shaping it for his purposes.

"What comes next, Father?" he asked, eager to learn more.

"Now, son, you and your brother will use this planet as your canvas," Father said, resting one hand on Lucifer's shoulder. "Use the wind I have shown you to break down some of these mountains, reduce some of the rocks to dust. When you have enough dust I will bring a primitive form of plant-life for you to spread over the surface. Over time, these primitive bacteria will produce an atmosphere rich in the elements required by the animals I plan to create."

"It will take a long time to reduce these rocks to dust and flatten the mountains," Michael said. "And the inside of the Earth is still hot, lava still reaches the surface, in places."

"That's the way it needs to be," Father informed him. "Don't worry about that."

"What will happen after you have brought the primitive bacteria to Earth?" Lucifer asked, increasingly curious about God's long term plan for the planet.

"They will create atmosphere, which will create oceans, in which animals can live, and that will interact with the atmosphere to create weather. Over time we can add increasingly complex animals and plants to the biosphere, until every area of the surface is inhabited by something."

"Father," Michael said. His face looked thoughtful. "What makes this planet so special? You could have made any planet like this, couldn't you?"

"Technically yes," Father said. "But what makes this world special is that it came to be the way it is without any input from me. After I created the universe, I just let everything happen. The whole thing expanded, galaxies formed, and within them solar systems and planets. They number billions, but for life to proliferate a planet requires some _very_ specific conditions. It can't be too hot, or too cold, or too dry or too wet. It has to be the right distance from its parent star, and in a stable orbit. When I discovered that the Earth had the correct conditions I sent a few of the building blocks of life to the surface, to see what would happen."

"And what happened?" Lucifer asked excitedly. He could imagine his father's surprise and pleasure at finding such a perfect planet, such an ideal blank canvas for his work.

"Life happened. I directed it as I chose, creating myriad forms. But I wasn't content with that. I wanted to take a more direct hand. I know that Michael has told you about the Leviathans." The elder angel looked slightly chagrined by his father's words. "From that mistake I learned that I must be more careful when experimenting with new things. I cannot allow the Earth to be destroyed. I might never find another place like it."

"We can help," Lucifer assured his father eagerly.

"And you will," Father replied. "I'm going to leave both of you here for a while, and I'd like you to carry out my request. Return to Heaven when you believe you have done an adequate job."

"We won't let you down, Father," Michael said.

Father returned to Heaven, and Lucifer turned his attention to the Earth. The surface was mostly cool, now, all rocky and brittle, but some of the volcanic vents still spluttered lava and coughed noxious grey smoke. Even though the planet appeared to be settling, he knew it was an illusion. Beneath his feet he could feel large slabs of land shifting minutely, floating above the Earth's semi-liquid mantle. It was all very dynamic, he realised, and the Earth would continue to change over time without input from God or angels - just not necessarily in the right ways.

"How do you want to do this?" Lucifer asked his brother.

Michael was silent for several moments as he considered the question. "Perhaps," he said at last, "we should each work on half of the Earth and meet on the other side. That way we won't waste time by going over the same areas twice."

"That sounds sensible," Lucifer agreed.

The brothers set out in opposite directions and began their task. Lucifer worked tirelessly, using his newly-taught ability to create and control wind to lower mountains and carve long, sinuous valleys into the landscape. After he had created some dust, he realised he could use the dust itself to further aid him, and he pushed it around with the wind, abrading a high plateau as a contrast to the towering mountains.

After he'd finished a portion of half of the Earth he decided to check up on his brother, to see how Michael was doing with his half of the planet. He teleported to his brother's side and found him putting the finishing touches on a sloping hillside. As the dust-carrying wind dissipated, Michael turned to look at him.

"Nice," Lucifer said, recognising it immediately. "This is your favourite hillside in Heaven, isn't it? The one with the redwood."

"Maybe it's arrogant or conceited of me," Michael said, "but I wanted to create something of mine here. Some place I could come to on Earth and feel at peace. I hope Father will eventually allow me to plant a redwood here too."

"I'm sure he will. You are his first son, he would do anything for you."

"I may be his first, but he favours you," Michael said.

Lucifer was surprised by his brother's words. He looked at Michael, searching for any sign of jealousy or anger, but there was none. As far as he knew, Michael wasn't even capable of feeling those things. He was simply stating what he perceived to be a fact.

"That's not true, brother," he replied. "He loves us both equally."

"Maybe he loves us equally, but as far as creations go, you are his favourite."

"What makes you say that?"

"I just know," Michael said. He sat down on the bare hillside and lay on his back, allowing his wings to spread out beneath him as he turned his silver eyes to the stars above. After a moment, Lucifer joined him, following his brother's gaze. "I was his prototype. He gave no further thought to my creation, than to make me the opposite of the Leviathans, and he feared he would have to lock me away so he did not allow himself to care for me too much. But you… when he created you, it was with the experience of my creation behind him. He made you with more care than he made me, putting time and effort and love into you. I can see it in his eyes, when he looks at you, and I can see that you love him in a way that I cannot."

"Why are you saying these things, Michael?" he asked.

"Because I don't want it to come between us. For as long as I can remember I have always wanted a brother, and now I have one. I don't mind that Father favours you, or that you love him more than I do. I'm just glad you are here."

They lay in silence, looking at the distant stars, some of which were already long dead. Lucifer had always known that his relationship with his father was different to the one between Michael and God, but he hadn't known why. Could it be true? Did Father really favour him? Suddenly, he was struck by a thought.

"Do you think Father will create more angels?" he asked.

"I'm sure he will."

"I would like that," he smiled. "I would have a little brother to teach and care for, and I would no longer be the youngest. When do you think he'll make more of us?"

"I don't know," Michael said with a small sigh. "Father doesn't always tell me his plans. I think he likes to be surprising sometimes."

They fell to silence, both lost in their own thoughts as they stared at the dark sky littered with sparkling jewels. _A little brother,_ Lucifer thought. He liked the sound of that.

o - o - o - o - o

_Brave New World_

Lucifer lay on his back beside his brother, looking up at the blue sky. Fluffy white clouds blew across the expanse of azure, some thin and wispy, formed by ice crystals high in the atmosphere, others thick and fluffy as water condensed closer to the ground. They were amazing, mesmerising things which changed shape as they were pushed around by the wind.

It had taken a long time for the atmosphere to be created by the primitive cyanobacteria, but slowly the air had become oxygenated, and nitrogen had been fixed by the tiny plants. Incoming heat from the sun had charged the air, powering a weather system and allowing water to form and fall as rain. The dusty soil was becoming more fertile and several lakes had formed in the areas of lower elevation. The rock was no longer bare and sharp, but was being gradually weathered and eroded as blue-green bacteria coated its surface.

"What do you think animals will look like?" Lucifer mused to Michael.

"Father told me about some of them, once," Michael replied. "There used to be birds, which had wings like us, and there were beasts which walked on multiple legs. Even the oceans had animals in them, which could swim through the water using their tails."

"It's hard to imagine those things living here. The Earth has been barren for so long." He turned onto his front and picked up a small piece of loose rock which was now home to a colony of cyanobacteria. Turning it over in his fingers, he tried to imagine how something so small could eventually become something as large as the redwoods in Heaven. "Where do you suppose Father is?" he asked. "It's been a long time since we last saw him." Indeed, they hadn't seen their father in many years. God had told them to take some of the bacteria from Heaven, spread it over the Earth and monitor what happened.

"Maybe he's in Heaven," Michael said. "Or in another part of the universe. He likes to take extended trips sometimes, visiting some of the other galaxies."

"You must have been very lonely, before he created me." Lucifer couldn't imagine being alone, as Michael had been. Though their Father was often gone for years at a time, Michael was always with him.

"He was. But he never complained."

Both angels looked up when their father spoke, and they saw God standing near them. Beside him was an angel which looked around at the Earth with curiosity in its bright silver eyes. The angel was smaller than Michael, not quite as bright as Lucifer, and it had a slightly different face.

"Father," Michael said, standing and approaching the pair.

"I see you two have been making the most of your time on Earth," said God, looking around at the clouds and the green-tinted rocks. "Good work."

"Thank you, Father," Michael said, and Lucifer nodded in agreement.

"This is Raphael," said Father, introducing the angel by his side. "I created him a few years ago and have been showing him around the universe. I think he knows enough now to help you. Raphael, these are your brothers Michael and Lucifer. They're the ones I told you about."

"I've been looking forward to meeting you," said Raphael calmly. "Father has told me much about you, and about the Earth. It's… smaller than I had expected."

Lucifer immediately leapt to the defence of his father's beloved creation. "It might not be much to look at now, but once we have finished with it, it will be a paradise."

Michael put a hand on his shoulder, and he felt momentarily shamed by his outburst. He knew that he needed to be patient with Raphael - the angel _was_ young, after all - just as Michael had been patient with him, but he didn't like the idea of anybody finding the Earth wanting. He'd put so much hard work and care into sculpting it that he couldn't stand the thought of another angel criticising the planet.

"Is Raphael to help us with the Earth, Father?" he asked, to take the attention away from himself.

"Eventually, yes. But for now I'd like to leave it alone, to give the weather a chance to become established. We will return to Heaven, and you two can get to know your brother a little better. Come, children." God disappeared back to Heaven, taking Raphael with him.

Lucifer looked around at the Earth, memorising the blue sky, the craggy contours, the infant lakes and the green-tinged rock. He knew that it would be different, the next time he came here, and he wanted to remember as it was, after he and Michael had toiled hard for years.

"Come on, Lucifer," said Michael, giving his younger brother a reassuring smile. "You'll see it again soon."

Lucifer nodded and, taking his brother's hand, followed their father and brother back to their home.


	3. Raphael

Raphael

_Friction_

Electricity crackled in the air above Raphael, spears of lightning tearing through the sky followed by the booming crash of thunder. Heavy rain pounded the ground, but it did not touch the angel as he stood still in the middle of it all, controlling the fierce hurricane with nothing but a single thought.

From his position on the cliff edge he could see a series of small islands on the horizon, far off the coast of the Earth's single massive continent, and he extended the storm to the islands, causing the waves to beat against the shore. Although to the casual observer it would have seemed nothing but a random act of destruction, the storm served a purpose; it churned up the water, mixing the different ocean layers, and caused weathering of both the islands and the cliff, which was one necessary component in the creation of sand.

There were no large life-forms in the ocean; not yet. But God was working on a multitude of different animal species to put into the enormous body of salty water, hard-shelled, soft-bodied creatures which would feed on the zooplankton, phytoplankton and tiny invertebrates present, and would in time develop into more advanced species.

When Raphael realised he was no longer alone he let the storm die away and turned to face his brothers. Michael was watching the tailing edge of the storm, and Lucifer was feigning interest in a primitive worm which was wiggling on the soil beside his feet.

"I've finished the planting of the eastern side of the continent," Michael said.

"And I have completed the central section," Lucifer added, turning his gaze from the worm to Raphael. His expression didn't change as he did so.

"What took you so long?" Raphael asked. "I finished planting here some time ago."

"You can't rush perfection," Lucifer shrugged. "Speaking of which, I don't like the placement of that third island out there." He gestured to the horizon. "It's going to interrupt an important warm-water current."

Lucifer reached out towards the island with a silver hand and made a grasping motion. A violent shockwave erupted deep underground from beneath his feet and went rippling through the earth towards the third island in the chain of ten. As it travelled through the ocean crust, a tsunami followed it, until it reached the island in question. The ground turned soft and it began to sink into the ocean as the tsunami covered it from above. In just minutes there was an empty section of ocean where once had stood a link in an archipelago.

"I only planted trees on that island a century ago," Raphael said, irritated by Lucifer's action. The second son of God was both arrogant and cocky. Lucifer _hated_ the fact that Raphael could create bigger and more powerful storms, so he showed off his skill with earth-shaping at every chance he got.

"And in several million years they'll be oil." Lucifer shrugged as if it was of no importance, then turned to Michael. "I think I'll go and see how Father's doing with those interesting little animals. What did he call them?"

"Trilobites," Michael replied.

"Yes, those. Are you coming?"

"I'll join you shortly."

Lucifer disappeared back to Heaven and Michael turned to face Raphael.

"What vexes you, brother?" the elder angel asked.

"Lucifer just destroyed one of my islands, without even consulting me," Raphael complained. "If I didn't know that he'd only sink it again, I'd raise it to show him that he can't just do whatever he wants. Why does he dislike me so much?"

"He doesn't dislike you," Michael assured him. "He is just a little more… whimsical than you and I."

"He gets away with too much. Do you remember the last millennia, when he sent that comet hurtling into Pluto, knocking it completely out of its orbit? Father didn't say a word!"

"Well, Father never really liked Pluto that much. Besides, it was an accident. Lucifer never intended for it to happen."

"It was no accident," Raphael said confidently. "He did it on purpose. Why do you always make excuses for him?"

"He's my brother," Michael said simply. "How can I be angry with him?"

"One of these days he's going to go too far and break something important to Father. And when that happens, you're not going to be able to make excuses for him anymore."

"Don't you think you're overreacting a little? It was just an island, Raphael."

Raphael shook his head in defeat. Michael didn't understand; it wasn't _just_ an island. It was every little snipe that Lucifer took at him, every little thing he did to spite his younger brother. Lucifer had disliked him ever since their first meeting, though Raphael did not know why his brother was carrying his grudge. He got on just fine with Michael, who was much more sensible and far less irreverent. But, for some reason, Lucifer just didn't care for him. Unfortunately, both God and Michael appeared blind to Lucifer's faults. He was their weakness.

"Do you want to come and take a look at Father's creations?" Michael offered.

"Thank you, but I'd prefer to stay here for now."

"As you wish." Michael hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "You have done good work here, Raphael. I mean it. You've worked hard from the moment Father instructed you to aid us. I know that Father appreciates you, and everything you have done."

"Thank you, Michael," he said, grateful that at least one brother respected his work.

"Try not to let Lucifer worry you. He is the way he is. It's nothing personal against you."

"Alright," he agreed. Finally content, Michael disappeared, but his words had not made Raphael feel any better. He just wished that Michael, or their father, would make an attempt to curb Lucifer's petty and irresponsible ways before he ended up hurting himself or destroying something valuable.

Sighing because he knew his wishes were futile, he turned his gaze back to the vast ocean, and started up the storm once more.

o - o - o - o - o

_The Big Experiment_

Two angels sat on the hillside beneath a giant redwood tree. The Earth had changed much over the past few millennia. Father had flooded the oceans with a plethora of animal species, their body-shapes all wildly experimental. There were soft-bodied things carried about by the currents, and carapaced-things which preyed on them. Sessile creatures, an amalgamation of plant and animal joined through a symbiotic relationship, lived by siphoning and filtering the water which flowed past them in warm, shallow seas. Some of the life-forms were microscopic, and others were metres long. They were straight or spiralled, they had no legs or dozens, they had several pairs of eyes or none at all. Any size and shape and colour conceivable was expressed within the ocean as a living, breathing creature.

Where Lucifer was, Raphael did not know. He'd simply found Michael sitting beneath his favoured tree and joined him in watching the teeming life in the ocean, enjoyable the occasional companionable silences between them. For once the Earth was relatively peaceful.

"What do you think the universe will be like, millions of years from now?" he asked Michael.

The elder angel gave his question serious thought before answering. "I think some things will be the same. There will still be galaxies and solar systems and stars. They will all live and die at their appointed times. But I think some things will change for the better. I think we will make a paradise on Earth, which will out-shine even Heaven. I think there will be a great host of angels, and they will come here to marvel at what Father has created. And I think Father will continue to experiment and make new things. Millions of years from now, I think we will share Heaven with other beings, other children of God, and we will watch over them and teach them."

Raphael did not reply. He was young, compared to his brother, and it was hard to imagine anything other than angels living in Heaven. Even imagining a great host of angels was difficult; for so long it had been just he and his two elder brothers, along with their father. He knew that God had created other beings before - Lucifer had told him the story of the Leviathans, probably hoping to scare him - but he couldn't conceive of a reason for Father to make anything other than angels. They were perfect beings, full of love and obedience for their father. Even Lucifer loved and obeyed father. How could God make anything as beautiful and perfect as angels?

There as a small _blip_ from out in the ocean, a tiny ripple of something which Raphael detected. He frowned, and gave Michael a questioning glance.

"A species just went extinct," Michael explained. "It happens from time to time."

"Who chooses which species dies, and why?"

"Father chooses. Just as he has created laws for the matter of the universe to obey, he has created laws for life to obey. There are certain criteria a species must meet if it is to continue living. If a species is too slow to adapt to its changing environment, it generally dies to make room for something more suitable."

"But _why_? Why do any of this? Why create a species only to let it die? Why doesn't Father just create complete and perfect beings like us, and give them the Earth to live on?"

"I don't know," Michael admitted. "It's Father's experiment. He hasn't told me why he's doing it."

"And your lack of understanding doesn't concern you?" he asked, puzzled. It certainly concerned Raphael. He liked to know what was going on, and why. He always felt better when he had direct orders to follow, and parameters to work within. He lacked Lucifer's spontaneity and creativity.

Michael turned his bright silver eyes towards Raphael, and there was calm acceptance within their luminscent depths. "No. He's our Father. I trust that he knows what he is doing. If he felt it necessary for me to know about his experiment, he would have told me."

"I suppose," he acquiesced. He did not ask any further questions about the subject because he knew it was pointless. Michael took obedience to Father very seriously, and he rarely asked questions. It seemed to Raphael that the more time passed, the quieter and more serious Michael became. He was the opposite of Lucifer, who tended to become louder and more irreverent with the passage of time.

For long years they sat on the hillside, observing the life in the oceans. Every now and again a tiny _blip_ on Raphael's celestial awareness indicated that another species had become extinct, but extinction wasn't the only thing that happened in the oceans. Some of the species began to change, and when questioned, Michael explained that the process was called 'evolution', and it had been created by Father as a way of testing, measuring and shaping life on the Earth. Some of the oceanic creatures became smaller, whilst some became larger. Some grew teeth, some gained eyes, colours were changed, new parts were added to bodies both internally and externally. It was a fascinating process to watch.

The ocean was not the only place where evolution was at work. On land, vegetation was proliferating even more rapidly than the animals in the vast sea. The super-continent was hot and humid, full of giant trees and winding lianas, bushy ferns and woody reeds. Whole sections of land had been turned to swamp as the ocean began to encroach, whilst silt washed down from the higher mountains by rainwater covered the flood-plains, creating fertile breeding ground for countless species of vegetation. There was only one place on the entire Earth where evolution did not take place, and that was on the small hillside with the giant redwood tree. Michael was somehow able to keep evolution at bay, preserving this one place, ensuring it remained a constant duplicate of his favourite hill in Heaven.

Finally, the long years of peace ended. Father and Lucifer returned, appearing on the hillside just in time to see another species go extinct. Michael stood upon their arrival, and Raphael followed him, to greet his absent family members.

"Thank you for keeping watch over the Earth for me, Michael, Raphael," Father said.

"It was the least we could do," Michael replied, as if Father's extended absence was something he had known about all along.

"Where have you been?" Raphael asked.

"Father and I went to watch the formation of a new galaxy," Lucifer said happily, a slight tone of gloating in his words. "It has some real potential."

Lucifer's words irritated Raphael. He knew that Lucifer was Father's favourite, but he was fed up of his brother's attitude, of his condescending remarks, of his arrogance and his ego. He didn't mind that Father and Lucifer had gone off together for years, because he had truly enjoyed his time on Earth with Michael, but he was no longer willing to put up with his brother's attitude.

"Father, can I speak to you alone?" he asked.

"Of course," Father replied. "Michael, Lucifer, I'll see you later in Heaven." Both of the angels disappeared instantly, and God turned to his youngest son. "Is something troubling you, Raphael?"

Now that he was finally alone with Father, he felt... hesitant. It was one thing to be annoyed by Lucifer, but quite another to complain about it to their creator. With a sudden moment of clarity, he saw what the situation would look like to Father. It would appear to be nothing but a younger son jealous of his older, more beautiful, perfect brother. If Raphael wanted to change his brother's behaviour towards him, he would have to change it himself, not ask his father to do it for him. Otherwise he would never hear the end of it from Lucifer.

"No... nothing is troubling me," he lied, trying to come up with something else to speak to father about now that he decided to stand up for himself. "I just... I had questions. I hoped you might answer them."

Father smiled, his bright face morphing into another form. "Despite what your brothers may have told you, I don't have all the answers. But if I can provide them, I will. Ask your questions."

"I was wondering why you are running this experiment on Earth," he said, recalling his earlier conversation with Michael. "Why you are creating things, and making them evolve, and making them extinct? What purpose does it serve?"

Father was silent for a long time. When at last he replied, it was not the response Raphael had been expecting.

"I am looking for answers," said God.

"To what question?"

"To the question of somebody else's experiment."

Raphael shook his head. Father was talking in riddles. His words made no sense at all.

"We all have a desire to know who created us, Raphael," Father elaborated. "This experiment I have... I want to see if something which has no knowledge of who and what it is can perceive anything _more_. The life-forms I have created for the Earth are primitive, but eventually they will evolve into complex beings. If everything goes to plan, they may even develop intelligence. Sentience. If they can become _aware_ that they are an experiment, then perhaps _I_ can become aware of that fact too. Perhaps I can learn to perceive what is beyond the confines of _my_ existence."

"You... you are creating things in the hope of finding _your_ creator?" he asked, shocked by his Father's explanation.

Father gestured around. "This place, this universe... I exist within it. I can shape it. But I did not create it. I woke at the moment of its birth, but I do not know how or why it came to be, nor do I know who or what created it. There must be something _more_. Something beyond the universe. But I cannot see what that something is. Perhaps, like those trilobites in the ocean, I am merely too young, too primitive, to perceive that the universe is just the experiment of something beyond even my comprehension."

"And you truly believe that by observing the growth and evolution of primitive creatures, you can learn how to pierce the veil over your eyes?"

"As above, so below," Father said simply.

As he looked at Father, Raphael began to wish he hadn't asked his question. Until now he had always considered Father wise and all-knowing. That he might have questions which he could not answer was almost beyond belief, and he knew that he would never see God the same way again. He understood, now, why Father did not challenge Lucifer's behaviour; the angels, too, were an experiment of sorts, just on a different scale. No doubt Father did not want to interfere with the natural progression of yet another test he had devised.

"I can see that my words trouble you," said Father at last. "What you do with this knowledge is your choice. You can share it with your brothers, or keep it to yourself."

"Why have you not told them of this?"

"Because they have not asked, and I never felt that they needed to know. Besides, they like the stability of having an all-knowing creator. Lucifer obeys because he loves me, and Michael because he fears me. I regret that I instilled fear in Michael when he was young, and that I put a little too much love into Lucifer's creation. But you... you are not like your brothers, Raphael. Where Lucifer obeys out of love, and Michael out of fear, I would like _you_ to obey out of understanding. Even if you can't understand my methods, I would like you to understand my motives."

Raphael considered his father's words. He didn't know why Michael feared God, though he suspected it had something to do with the Leviathans of which Lucifer had spoken. Nor did he know what God meant when he said he had put 'a little too much love' into Lucifer's creation. But he finally felt as if he truly _did_ understand his father, and he felt closer to God at that moment than he ever had before. He also realised something; that he too was an experiment. But that didn't mean he had no worth. He was still an angel, after all.

"Thank you for being honest with me, Father," he replied. "I won't speak of this to Michael and Lucifer. As you say, your sons need you to be all-knowing for them. They need to believe that you have plans, and that everything you do is for a reason. Without that knowledge, they would be lost, and hurt."

"I'm glad you have made that choice, and that we spoke of this," Father said. "Now, let us return to Heaven. Your brothers are waiting for us."

o - o - o - o - o

_Cambrian_

Michael had not been wrong. As animals continued to thrive in the oceans of Earth, so angels began to thrive in Heaven. Father finally decided that his angel experiment had been a success, and he went as crazy in their creation as he had in the creation of the marine Earth creatures. His first new creation was a younger brother for Raphael, named by Father as Gabriel. God gave to Gabriel all the skills he had given the elder angels, and Raphael, Lucifer and Michael all took turns in watching over Gabriel, and teaching him about the universe.

Raphael found it challenging to keep his younger brother in check. Gabriel possessed all of Michael's humility, but none of his stoicism, all of Lucifer's capriciousness, but none of his arrogance, all of Raphael's curiosity, but none of his self-restraint. If you left Gabriel alone for a century, you might return to find him exactly in the same place you had left him waiting patiently for you to come back, or he might be galaxies away, playing amongst the swirling debris of a newly-forming solar system. Not for the first time, Raphael began to wonder if this was why Lucifer had resented him; a younger brother took up a _lot_ of time and attention.

Following the creation of Gabriel, Father stopped creating such powerful and individual angels, and instead turned his attention to creating them to specific templates. The Earth, God said, was to be a place of chaos and creativity, so Heaven was to be the opposite of that, a place of order and consistency. To his four eldest sons he gave the title 'arch-angel', and charged them with ruling over his other creations.

First came the seraphim, the middle-management of the Heavenly host. Two-score of them God created, bringing them into existence with the knowledge of who and what they were, and enough understanding of the universe to be able to function efficiently under orders. Then, with a newer template, he created thousands of smaller angels, each one a tiny candle to the bonfire of an arch-angel's light. To them Father gave fewer skills, and he tethered them to Heaven, so that if they started to prove troublesome they could be cut off from their celestial power, cast adrift in the universe to slowly fade away.

During the millennia it took Father to create his seraphim and angels, Raphael learnt much. The first thing was that if he ignored Lucifer's goading, Lucifer stopped making the attempts. Instead of letting his older brother irritate him, he allowed Lucifer's comments to roll right off him, and they soon stopped cutting as deeply as they once had. Having Gabriel around helped; Lucifer was the only one who didn't get frustrated by the youngest arch-angel's whimsical ways, and Gabriel spent more time with Lucifer than he did with Michael or Raphael.

The four brothers sometimes spent time with their father, both in Heaven and on Earth. He gave them instructions to pass on to the seraphs, who in turn were to instruct the angels, because for some reason, Father did not allow angels other than the four brothers to see him. To the younger angels, God existed only as a story told by their older brothers. Raphael did not understand why God wanted it that way, but he had learnt long ago that Father always had reasons for his experiments.

During a quiet period in the Earth's seas, God called his four sons to Heaven. Raphael was second to arrive, not far behind Michael. Lucifer followed a short time later, and at last Gabriel appeared as well.

"It's nearly time," Father said, once his sons were assembled.

"Time for what?" Raphael asked. He was usually the first to ask questions whenever the five met, but Father never rebuked him for it.

"Soon the Earth will begin to change. So far, animal life has existed only in the ocean, but soon it will start to claim the land as well. I believe that things are progressing well enough there for us to turn our attention elsewhere."

"Elsewhere?" asked Michael. He sounded surprised, and Raphael glanced at his oldest brother. Whatever God was planning, Michael had not been informed of it.

"I have created three other worlds," Father explained. "They are Earth-like but barren, each in a separate galaxy. I have named them Pandora, Cimmeria and Hyperion. Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, I would like you to prepare these worlds as you have prepared the Earth. Sculpt them as you wish and cover them with plant-life."

"For what purpose?" Lucifer asked. "More of your experiments?"

"Yes," God said simply.

"What about me?" Gabriel asked. "Don't I get a planet?"

"You're too young to take charge of a planet just yet," Raphael told him, thinking it just as likely that Gabriel would forget about his planet and go wandering away from it, leaving it to die.

"I may be young, but I'm not powerless," Gabriel said crossly. "Look what I can do!"

He snapped his fingers and a large comet came roaring through Heaven, a white-blue tail of ice crystals trailing behind it. Heaven shook very briefly before the comet continued on its way. As the shaking stopped, Raphael looked at his brother in disapproval, before he noticed the too-innocent expression on Lucifer's face.

"Was it really wise to teach him how to hurl comets?" he asked his elder brother.

"I learnt it by myself," Gabriel said, attempting to defend Lucifer in a show of misguided loyalty.

"Regardless," Michael said, interrupting the argument before it could begin, "Gabriel raises a good question. What will he do, whilst we prepare these worlds for you?"

"Gabriel will stay here with me," Father said. "He will act as my intermediary, passing messages on to the seraphim for me in your absence."

Raphael said nothing, but he secretly thought it was a terrible idea. Gabriel was not mature enough to be left on his own, though he had to admit, Father _was_ the only one the youngest arch-angel actually obeyed immediately without question. Perhaps a little of Father's personal touch would be of benefit to Gabriel.

"But _Father_," Gabriel complained, a look of pleading in his silver eyes, "I want to make a world for you too!"

"And you will, eventually. But for the moment I need you here, to be my messenger. Besides, you can still watch the Earth. Wouldn't you like to see it change?"

"I suppose so," Gabriel said, obviously trying not to sulk in front of Father.

"When should we return?" Michael asked.

"Whenever you deem it necessary," Father said. "You may stay with your worlds until they are ready, or you may return to Heaven as regularly as you wish."

"We won't disappoint you," Michael said, speaking for the three eldest brothers.

"Raphael," Lucifer said, with a sly grin on his face, "I bet I can finish my world before you finish yours." And with that he disappeared.

Raphael shook his head. Sometimes he wondered if his older brother would ever grow up. He suspected not.

"I will see you when I return, Raphael," Michael said to him, before turning to the youngest brother. "Behave whilst we are gone, Gabriel." Then Michael, too, disappeared.

"I look forward to seeing what has become of the Earth when I return," Raphael told God. Then, with a final look at his father and brother, he teleported to Hyperion, leaving Heaven behind.

- o - o -

* * *

If you're one of the sixty people who's read this story so far - I hope you're enjoying it! And if you're a newcomer - welcome! I don't know why you're all so quiet, but since I haven't had any complaints about anything I'm going to work on the presumption that you're all at least being mildly entertained within my tiny section of the interweb.

I was dreading writing Raphael's chapter, because we know less of him than any other arch-angel, but so far, I've had more fun writing his chapter than any others (and I hope I've convincingly expanded upon a character of whom little is known by viewers of the show). If you've enjoyed this chapter, you're going to love the next one.

Catch you next Friday.


	4. Gabriel

Gabriel

_The Lone Angel_

Gabriel travelled the Earth's home galaxy, searching for something - anything - of interest. The past few millennia had been mostly tedious. With his elder brothers away, he had been forced to act as Father's messenger, relaying his orders to the seraphs, all of whom were a thoroughly dull bunch with about as much personality as a rock. And not a particularly interesting rock, either. Father's orders to them were not too taxing or complex. Mostly he wanted things doing outside the Earth's solar system; a few planets aligned here, a comet's path adjusted there... child's play. At least, child's play to an arch-angel. For the seraphs and their lower angel minions it was more difficult, and they actually had to expend real effort to achieve results, but Gabriel rarely paid attention to the particulars.

Right now, Michael, Lucifer and Raphael were back in Heaven, reporting to their father. They came back every few thousand years, with updates on how their worlds were progressing. It had been amusing to listen to their reports the first few times, because Lucifer and Raphael appeared to be having a competition to see who could complete their world first, only Raphael was trying to pretend that he wasn't competing at all, and Michael was purposely working slower than the other two just so one of them wouldn't have to finish last. Michael was selfless that way.

Now, however, Gabriel found their reports dull. Too often he was ignored by his brothers and their father as they talked about their new worlds, comparing their progress, sharing their findings. Too often he felt like the odd one out, the observer who could not participate because he lacked understanding and experience. So caught up had his brothers been in their conversation that none had noticed when Gabriel had slipped out of Heaven and gone wandering to find his own entertainment.

Unlike his brothers, he didn't get lonely. He was too good at amusing himself to need constant companionship, and he knew it was what made him different to the rest of his family. Usually, Michael and Lucifer spent time together, and Raphael hovered around Father. Or sometimes, when Father and Lucifer went off on their own business together, Michael and Raphael took the opportunity to reminisce about the past. Gabriel had listened to their stories once, but he didn't know whether to believe them. Michael claimed that the Earth had once been a barren, burning ball of molten rock, with no plants or animals or oceans. It sounded too incredulous to be true, but then again, Michael didn't really have that much of a sense of humour, and he lacked the imagine to invent such a wild claim.

Though usually more than capable of entertaining himself, he now found that he was bored with it all. He'd seen enough suns forming to know how they worked, and he'd even destroyed one or two, when he thought his father wasn't looking. Out of curiosity he'd peeked into a black hole, but had seen nothing of interest on the other side. He'd broken a planet down into an asteroid belt and styled a dust nebula into the shape of a tree. When you factored in that for the past millennia he'd had nobody but father and seraphs for company, was it any wonder he was tired of the stale ennui?

With nothing better to do, he returned to Earth, where something caught his attention. There were angels on the edge of the huge continent, standing beside the shore of a shallow lagoon. Why, he wondered, had they come here? Very few seraphs had been instructed to carry out work on the Earth, and though nothing was stopping angels from visiting the planet, most of the time they preferred to stay in Heaven. They weren't particularly creative things, angels, and they tended not to do too much thinking for themselves. Besides, no other angels knew about the importance of the Earth, yet. Curious about their presence, he teleported to the planet's surface, and appeared before them, shining brightly beneath the pale light of the lone full moon.

There were three of them on the shoreline, angels of the smallest variety, with not a seraph amongst them. As soon as Gabriel arrived they looked wary, and a little guilty, and they started to draw away from him. Their actions made him sigh with frustration. He knew that they had been made to fear and obey arch-angels, but he suspected they'd never even seen one before. Angels of their generation received their orders directly from seraphs, and if they witnessed an arch-angel it was only in passing.

"What are you doing here?" Gabriel asked before the three could disappear. Now that he had asked them a question, they were bound by the laws of Heaven to stay and answer him.

One little angel stepped forward, a fearful look in his eyes.

"We were just looking. I promise, we didn't touch anything."

"Where is your seraph?"

"In Heaven. He... he said we were not needed at present. He didn't say we shouldn't come here."

"Then why are you acting so guilty?" he asked.

The angel cringed at the question, and a second angel stepped forward to reply. "We just wanted to look at the animals," he said. "Our seraph said nobody was to interfere on Earth, but we aren't interfering if we're just looking."

"Perhaps," the third angel said thoughtfully, "there is some way we can serve you, arch-angel. In... ah... return for you not mentioning this to the seraph."

Gabriel studied the three little angels more closely. He'd never really looked at other angels before; they were so small, their light so pale compared to that of his father and brothers, that they had always seemed the same, to him. His father _had_ created them from a template, after all. But now he saw that even though they were the same type of angel, there were minor differences between them.

The last angel who had spoken was the largest, and the light of his body had a faint sky-blue tinge to it, as did his eyes. The second angel to have spoken was the smallest, with a body and eyes that were a dazzling shade of silver-white. The first speaker was between the other two in size, and though his body was white, his eyes shone more gold than silver. There also seemed to be some small differences in their personalities; golden-eyes, mentally termed 'cringer' by Gabriel, appeared to be the most scared by the arch-angel's presence. The white-eyed one had been clever enough to spot a loophole and brave – or foolish – enough to stand up to an arch-angel, whilst the angel with blue-tinted eyes had made a sly suggestion, reminding Gabriel of the clever ways in which Lucifer often spoke.

"Do you have names?" he asked them. He knew the seraphs had names, but he rarely needed to remember more than a dozen of them.

"My name is Inias," said the golden-eyed angel who had spoken first.

"Castiel," said the second.

"Uriel," added the largest of the three.

"Is this the first time you've come to the Earth?" he asked.

"We've watched it from Heaven several times, but we've never walked its surface before," Inias assured him nervously.

"Well, let me give you the grand tour," he offered. He gestured behind, at the mass of the continent. "Over there we have some mountains and trees and rivers." He then pointed towards the vast expanse of water. "Here is the ocean with some animals in it."

"What's that?" Castiel asked, pointing to a fish that was lurking near the surface of the lagoon.

"That's an animal," Gabriel said patiently.

"But how did it get here? And what does it do?"

"Father put it here. As for what it does... it's a fish. It mostly swims around, eats things, and makes more fish."

As Castiel wandered closer toward the water of the lagoon to look more closely at the fish, Uriel approached Gabriel, with Inias loitering not far behind him.

"What is our Father like?" the larger angel asked Gabriel.

"God? Well, he's... our Father." Gabriel frowned at his own lack of words. Nobody had ever asked him to describe God before. It wasn't an easy thing to do. "Mostly he just bosses us all around."

"Will we ever see him?"

"I don't know. Maybe, if he wants you to see him."

"Why doesn't he speak to us himself?"

"I don't know! Why do you ask so many questions?" he said in exasperation.

"We asked questions of the seraphs," Castiel said, looking up from his observation of the fish. "They told us not to ask any more."

Gabriel felt a moment of sympathy and pity for the tiny angels. They reminded him a little of himself, when he had asked questions of his brothers during their debriefings to their father, and had consequently been ignored.

"Well, the seraphs are mostly jerks," he said. "Hey, do you want to see something cool?"

Before the smaller angels could reply, he snapped his fingers and a shower of meteors began raining through the upper atmosphere, burning out in beautiful, fiery glory, each one making a hissing noise as it disintigrated. The three angels watched, surprise and awe in their eyes, and Gabriel allowed a self-satisfied smile to play across his face. Finally, he had found beings who were both impressed and appreciative of his skills.

One of the meteors made it through the atmosphere and hit the continent a few hundred miles away. There was a minor tremor through the earth upon its impact.

"Ah... are you supposed to do that?" Inias asked, looking at the rising smoke cloud in the distance.

"Sure," Gabriel said with a shrug. "I can do whatever I want. I'm looking after the Earth for Father, whilst my brothers are busy elsewhere."

"Can we help?" Castiel asked immediately.

"Why would you want to help?" The small angel's words confused Gabriel. Looking after the Earth was a chore, one that he did not particularly relish. Nothing exciting ever happened to it.

"He likes the animals," Uriel explained, and Castiel looked slightly embarrassed by his larger brother's words.

"I like them too," Inias said, jumping to his brother's defence. "My favourite are those ones with the curly round shells. What do you call those?"

"Well, Father calls them nautiloids. They're one of his favourites, too," Gabriel said.

"I like this one," said Castiel, pointing to the fish. Gabriel glanced at it, but it didn't look particularly interesting. Like many of Father's inventions, it was starting to try and make its way to land. Its pectoral and pelvic fins had become longer and more supportive, allowing it to crawl its way along the bottom of the muddy lagoon, and its lungs were capable of breathing in atmospheric oxygen, as well as oxygen derived from the water. With each generation, the fish was becoming more and more amphibious, but its body was quite plain and dull, nowhere near as visually appealing as the nautilus shells.

Perhaps, Gabriel thought, he could make use of these angels. They could watch the Earth for him, giving him free time to do as he chose. Father need never know that he wasn't the one observing the Earth directly, and the angels would probably be more than happy to get away from their seraph. But just as he was about to take them up on their offer, Michael appeared, arriving on the Earth in a flash of bright light. The three small angels shielded their eyes, whilst Gabriel fought back his irritation.

When Michael stopped shining so brightly, the other angels looked up at him, as fearfully as they had looked at Gabriel. Michael ran his eyes over them, but didn't look at his younger brother yet.

"Don't step on that fish, Castiel," Michael said to the smallest angel. "We have big plans for that fish." Castiel immediately left the shoreline, joining his brothers, possibly believing there was safety in numbers. But Michael ignored them all as he now turned to Gabriel. "Father wants to see you, Gabriel."

This could not be anything good. That Father had sent Michael to personally return him to Heaven suggested he was going to be in trouble for something. He just wished he knew what. He'd done everything Father had asked of him; passed messages to the seraphim, watched the Earth, carried out the orders the seraphim and angels couldn't handle... perhaps, he thought, God had found out about that star he had destroyed a few centuries ago.

"Probably just wants to give me some new orders," Gabriel said casually to the angels, as much to reassure himself as them. "See you around, little ones."

He teleported back to Heaven, and Michael followed him, official escort to Father's summons. Together they went to the place where Father resided, right in the middle of the Heavenly garden. No angels or seraphs ever came here; they knew better than to seek out their creator. Only the arch-angels, the beloved sons of God, came to this place. And when Gabriel arrived in Father's realm, he found both Raphael and Lucifer waiting for him, neither of them looking pleased. It was a testament to how bad the situation was, that the brothers weren't arguing as usual.

"Gabriel," Father said, without preamble, "it has come to my attention that angels have been visiting the Earth."

"I was going to tell them to return to Heaven," Gabriel lied guiltily.

"This isn't the first time angels have walked upon my creation, and in the past I have always been content to ignore their intrusions, for they usually keep their visits brief and they do not cause too much interference in my plans. However, in light of recent events, I am forced to take a firmer hand."

"Your meteor storm wiped out three species of plant and two species of insect," Raphael said in a tone of disapproval. Gabriel looked to Lucifer for support, but his brother's eyes were cold.

"I'm sorry, Father," Gabriel said, genuinely remorseful. It was bad enough that Father was angry with him, but now his brothers were displeased, too. He hated displeasing his brothers. "I didn't mean for that to happen."

"I know you didn't," Father said patiently. "But you must learn that your actions will always have consequences. From this moment, angels are forbidden from visiting the Earth, unless they are ordered there by an arch-angel. And an angel sent to the Earth may not affect it in any way; they may only observe what happens. And until I say otherwise, Gabriel, you are not to return to the Earth yourself. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Father," he said contritely.

"Good. Now, your brothers have to return to their tasks. I'd like you to stay in Heaven for the moment. I have orders for you to convey to the seraphim."

Gabriel watched as his brothers teleported away. Michael gave him a fleeting expression of sympathy before disappearing. Alone, he turned to God.

"Father, I truly am sorry," he said. "If I'd known that the meteors would wipe out some of the species, I never would have brought them to Earth."

"But you did," Father said with a sigh. "I know you intended no harm, but harm was done. You are a powerful being, Gabriel. You have to learn that with your power comes a responsibility to use it wisely. You can't just do whatever you want, because there will always be repercussions."

"I understand."

"I hope you do. For the moment I have work to do. You may leave, but return when I call for you."

Gabriel obeyed, teleporting from his Father's presence to some other place in Heaven, where he could be alone. Now he knew why Raphael and Lucifer were so cross with him. Whenever they returned home they liked to visit the Earth, and see how it had changed. Now, thanks to Gabriel, they wouldn't be allowed to travel to it and affect it in any way. He had essentially revoked their rights to influence the tiny planet's future. He just hoped that, in time, they would forgive him.

o - o - o - o - o

_Descent from the Trees_

As it turned out, the Earth – when not being interfered with by angels – did alright for itself. For millions of years Gabriel watched as the planet developed. Marine animals became fully amphibious, and then terrestrial, hauling themselves out of the shallow seas and onto land. The conditions – warm and humid – favoured one particular species that had evolved, and reptiles proliferated across the continent. Some of them grew so big that they rivalled an angel in height, though none evolved to be as tall as a seraph or an arch-angel. And not all of them grew big; some remained small enough to fit in the palm of an angel's hand, had angels been allowed to go to Earth and hold them.

The planet itself continued to change. It was a dynamic thing, powered by its own internal heat. The great continent was eventually split apart by shifting pockets of molten rock in the mantle, forming several smaller island-like continents which drifted slowly away from each other over the course of eons. The reptilian creatures continued to thrive even when they were separated by ocean, filling every ecological niche, until it seemed they were set to become the dominant, successful end to Father's great experiment.

Unfortunately for the reptiles, it wasn't meant to be. A large meteor, far bigger than the ones Gabriel had burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere, was on a collision course for the planet. Forbidden by their father from interfering, the angels could only watch as it impacted the Earth on one of the continents. The devastation was wide-spread. Everything on the same continent as the impact site was killed, vapourised by the explosion or by the ensuing shockwave. A cloud of thick dust was thrown up into the atmosphere, blocking out the light of the sun. Plants died and the reptiles starved or suffocated. As conditions on land became more and more hostile, some of the animals returned to the water whence their ancestors came. Reptiles became more amphibious as they sought refuge in the rivers of the slowly dying continents. Another of the animal groups, the small furry mammals, made their way back to the ocean, their limbs evolving into fins and tails so they could compete with the fish which had never left the sea in the first place.

Over time, the planet settled again. The dust cloud slowly dispersed and the barren Earth was once more colonised by a multitude of plants. The animals evolved more tentatively this time, as if afraid of what might happen if they repopulated the planet too quickly. Because conditions remained much cooler than they had been during the reign of the giant reptiles, the lizards and amphibians of this new era found it harder to compete. This time it was the birds and the mammals which took to the stage, evolving to specific roles. Though it took millions of years, the planet teemed with life once more, and this time it was far more diverse. The death of the lizards had left vacuums which new species attempted to fill.

As naturally happened every so often, the planet began to cool further, and ice formed at its poles. Great white glaciers spread south from the north of the planet and north from the south pole, extending to the edges of the tropical zones. Then, as the ice began to recede at long last, something new happened. One of the species of ape which lived in the habitable zone of the frozen planet climbed down from the trees and began to migrate. It followed the ice, and as it followed the retreating glaciers its intelligence seemed to increase exponentially. Apes had always used primitive tools, but now their tools became more advanced. They figured out that friction caused heat and eventually fire, and armed with their new ability to create a warming flame, they spread out, no longer held prisoner by the ice which had caged their ancestors.

The apes adapted faster than any other species that had been seen on the Earth so far, and different species began to emerge, interbreeding, fighting with each other, until, ultimately, one came out on top. Father seemed pleased by their emergence, and he called them 'humans'. God spent a lot of time watching them, and when the humans started developing intricate rituals to worship what they perceived to be god-like creator spirits, Father finally decided they were advanced enough to know more. He called his sons for a meeting in Heaven.

"I am pleased by the progress the humans are making," said God to his four children. "I've decided to lift some of the restrictions on angels visiting the Earth."

"Good!" Lucifer proclaimed with a smile. "I've missed being able to walk on its surface. Cimmeria is developing well, but it's a just pale reflection of the Earth."

"I'm lifting the restrictions," Father said, "but I'm not removing them entirely. Unfortunately, an angel's true form is dangerous to humanity. My children are simply too powerful to be beholden by human beings; it would kill them to see you as you are."

"Then how are we to visit the planet?" Michael asked, frowning.

"I will create vessels for you."

"Vessels?" said Raphael. He did not look pleased by the idea.

"Into some of the humans I will place a tiny piece of the celestial spark innate to all angels. The humans who carry it will not be aware of it, and it will not change them, but it will mean that they can hear you speak, and some may be able to look at you safely. You will be able to converse with them, and speak to them of their creator, and of Heaven. Through them you will be able to perform miracles."

"What do you mean, 'through them'?" asked Lucifer.

"If you wish to take any action on the Earth, you must enter one of the vessels, and use its body to interact with other humans."

"But... why? What purpose will it serve?"

"I wish the humans to know of me. I would like to offer them a place in Heaven."

Lucifer narrowed his eyes, clearly not keen on the idea of sharing his home with a bunch of smelly, hairless apes. Gabriel sympathised with his brother.

"You want to bring humans _here?_" Lucifer asked. "How are they to survive, if our forms are dangerous to them? And what will become of Heaven, when it's full of... of... animals? All they do is eat and fornicate and fight with each other. They sound more like Leviathans than angels."

"I have to agree with Lucifer," Raphael said, albeit with great reluctance. "Father, what will be gained from bringing humans here?"

"The human bodies will not come here," Father replied. "Only their souls, when they die."

"Souls?" Gabriel interjected. "What are they?"

"They're the part of the human that tells it what it is and dictates its behaviour," Father explained. "The humans developed souls some time ago, but none of you noticed because you didn't know what you were looking at. The humans have crossed a threshold; they perceive themselves as "I". Each one of them is individual and unique. I created the Leviathans with individuality, and I created you, my children, to be individuals too. But so far, humans are the only other species to have developed this self-awareness, and they did so without my input. It is their souls which make them unique and self-aware, so souls are precious things that I want to preserve. When humans die, their souls will come here. They will continue to exist in Heaven."

The four sons were stunned into silence. Heaven was where angels dwelt, and for as long as any of them could remember, only angels and the plants of Father's garden had lived here. For Father to offer a place in Heaven to the souls of a child-species was almost beyond belief. Gabriel knew that his own concerns were duplicated within his brothers. At last, Michael spoke up.

"Father... I am not sure the other angels will accept this knowledge easily," he said. Gabriel nodded in agreement.

"They will," Father said. "They were designed to obey. They might not _like_ it, but they have no choice in the matter. You will tell them of my plans for the Earth and for the humans. Michael, you yourself will call an assembly and bring this news to them."

"Yes, Father," Michael said, bowing to Father's command. "I will see to it immediately."

"Before you go, there is one other thing." God waited until his sons were all listening fully. "I will create vessels for you... for all angels... on Earth. But the humans have grown beyond being simple animals, now. They are sentient beings. If you want to use one as a vessel, you must first obtain its permission."

Lucifer scowled, and Gabriel could almost read his thoughts. Arch-angels were the most powerful beings in creation. They did what they wanted – as long as it wasn't in opposition to God's wishes – and gave the orders to everyone else. They did not ask permission, especially not from some dirty animal.

Michael seemed to sense his brother's displeasure too, for he teleported himself plus the other three arch-angels away from Father's residence, and rematerialised them atop his favourite hill, beneath the redwood tree. Lucifer was the first to vent his frustration.

"Can you believe Father?" Lucifer demanded. "Telling us to ask permission, like some lowly servants?"

"I will not be visiting the Earth, if it means explaining myself to some hairless ape," Raphael agreed. "As much as I love Father, I cannot imagine bringing myself to request permission from an animal just to walk the Earth."

"Maybe it won't be so bad," Gabriel countered. His two brothers glared at him, and he leapt to his own defence. "I mean, it could be interesting, to witness the Earth from the human point of view. Besides, you heard Father, he wants us to tell the humans about him, and offer them a place in Heaven."

"He didn't mean us specifically," Raphael replied. "That's what the lower angels are for. Let them be the ones to prostrate themselves on the ground in front of humanity. I will not lower myself to such actions."

"Nor will I," said Lucifer. "What do you say, Michael? If we all stick together, if we agree to send only lower angels to the Earth, Father will change his mind about this whole 'permission' thing, I'm sure of it."

Gabriel looked to his eldest brother, and saw the indecision warring in his silver eyes. Michael was torn between obedience to his father and love for his brother. At last he nodded imperceptibly, and said, "Very well. Unlike you and Raphael, I have no burning desire to return to the Earth again. I've cared for it, but it means far more to the both of you than it does to me. I am content to stay away, and send only lesser angels to do Father's bidding."

All three brothers turned to Gabriel.

"We can only change Father's mind if we all agree to this together, Gabriel," said Lucifer.

Gabriel hesitated. As much as he disliked the idea of having to ask a hairless monkey permission to do _anything_, he didn't think the situation was as dire as his brothers were making out. It might even be fun to see what it was like inside a human. But the last thing he wanted to do was argue with his brothers; for better or worse, they were his family. They'd always looked out for him in the past, and he owed them this.

"Alright," he agreed. "I won't go to Earth."

"Then it's settled," said Lucifer. "We will remain in Heaven, and Father will see how strongly we feel about this. I have to return to Cimmeria now, the planet's ready to develop weather, but Gabriel, keep our agreement in mind whilst we're gone."

"I will," he sighed.

o - o - o - o - o

_How to make friends and influence vessels_

Of course, no plan was ever that simple. The agreement the brothers made was easy to execute in theory, but difficult in reality. Not long after the three eldest arch-angels returned to the cultivation of their own planets, God summoned Gabriel and told him there was a task to be carried out on Earth. Gabriel hesitated, but what could he do? There was no way he could disobey Father even if it meant breaking the agreement he had made with his brothers.

With great trepidation he travelled to the Earth, seeking out a vessel. It wasn't all that difficult; the vessels each possessed a tiny spark of celestial energy easily detectable by an angel, and Gabriel selected one of the strongest vessels to approach. Unfortunately, he underestimated the power of his own life-force, and as soon as he manifested on Earth the vessel was killed, its eyes burnt out of their sockets and its fleshy brain liquified. Perplexed, he returned to Heaven, to seek further instruction from God, but God was not there. Most likely he'd gone on one of his tours around the universe, which didn't help Gabriel at all.

When he realised he was in over his head, he began looking around for help. Somebody in Heaven _had_ to know how to get into one of those fragile little vessels before it could drop dead; after all, angels had been carrying out Heaven's orders on Earth for a couple of hundred years by now, so it _had_ to be possible. At first he considered asking one of the seraphs for advice, but quickly dismissed that idea. Arch-angels were supposed to be all-knowing, and he would never live it down if he had to ask a seraphim for help.

Then, he recalled the time he had last walked on Earth, and the three little angels he had met there. They had been so scared of him at first, that he suspected he could easily cow them into telling him what he needed to know, and threaten them with death by firing if they told _anyone_ he had asked them for help. Remembering their names, he mentally summoned the three angels to Michael's hillside, and waited.

They appeared promptly, looking surprised by the summons. The angel with the gold-tinted eyes – Inias, Gabriel recalled – stepped forward first.

"Gabriel, we came as soon as we heard your call. Is there... some way we can serve you?" he asked nervously.

Perhaps, Gabriel thought, as he watched the three small angels, he wouldn't _need_ to directly ask for their help, and threaten them with death. They didn't have to know what this summons was _truly_ about.

"As a matter of fact, there is," he replied, confident now that he had a better way of extracting the information he needed. "You three have been working on Earth, haven't you?"

"A little, yes," the smallest angel, Castiel, replied cautiously.

"And how's that going?"

"We made our reports known to our seraph. Has he not told you of our progress?"

"I don't want to talk to your seraph," Gabriel said impatiently. Why did they have to be so cagey? "I want to talk to you. I want to hear what you think about the humans."

All three angels looked at each other as if they didn't understand the question, or feared to give a wrong answer. He could see it in their eyes; they thought they were being tested. They didn't know how honest to be. Finally, the largest angel, Uriel, spoke up.

"They are animals with some small amount of intelligence. Nothing more, nothing less."

"And you've been using them as vessels?"

"Of course," said Inias immediately. "We were present during Michael's assembly. We know that we can only carry out our orders by possessing humans as vessels."

Gabriel felt like screaming in frustration. Did these angels have to be literally hand-walked to the answer he sought? But he told himself to be patient. They were just children. They didn't know why he had truly brought them here. He had to tease the information from them, not bludgeon them to death with questions.

"How many humans did you kill before you figured out how to possess them?" he asked.

"One or two," Castiel admitted. "But we have the hang of it now."

"So how does it work for you little guys? I assume it's quite different to how seraphs and arch-angels possess vessels?" he prompted with as much patience as was left to him.

"I think it's much the same. Very few vessels can tolerate seeing us completely. First we speak to the vessels without manifesting fully, to slowly get them used to our presence. Sometimes we appear to them in their dreams. Only when we have obtained their permission to use their bodies do we manifest fully, and it's brief exposure for the vessels."

Of course! Why hadn't he considered it sooner? Speaking to them without manifesting completely, or speaking to them through their dreams, would circumvent the whole 'liquified' problem. Now that he had been given the answer, it seemed so obvious. So simple.

"May we enquire what this is about, Gabriel?" asked Uriel, that familiar calculating glint in his blue-tinted eyes.

"No you may not," he replied. Now that he had his answers, he needed the angels no further. "You will now return to whatever task you were performing before I summoned you. You will tell nobody that we spoke, and that includes the seraphs. Do you understand?"

They confirmed that they did, and then they disappeared. Hopefully their absence had gone unnoticed, but if not, what they told their seraph was their own problem.

Armed with knowledge, Gabriel's second attempt at taking a vessel went much better than his first, though it seemed to be a pointlessly time-consuming process. When he was finally able to gain permission from a vessel, though, he found the experience fascinating. The whole thing could be likened to a clay cup holding an entire ocean. Gabriel's presence was so overpowering that he was barely able to leave the vessel's body alive, once he had finished the task God had set him.

It should have ended there, but of course, that would have been too easy. The next time Gabriel's brothers returned to Heaven, Father told them that they, too, would have tasks to complete on the Earth, and told them that Gabriel would show them how to approach vessels, since he seemed to have mastered it quickly.

Lucifer was furious and refused to speak to Gabriel for centuries. Raphael wasn't pleased either, but he followed Michael's lead and finally sought out Gabriel, asking him for advice on finding and possessing a suitable vessel. Under the guidance of the three arch-angels, their seraph servants and the angels who did most of the work, humans were slowly taught about God, and about their future home in Heaven. Lucifer was the only arch-angel who did not partake in Father's orders; he simply returned to Cimmeria, and spent his time sulking.

o - o - o - o - o

_Division within unity_

When the humans had finally started to flourish, turning away from their pritive cave-dwelling hunter-gatherer lifestyles and learning how to build proper homes for themselves, God called his sons to Heaven. Even Lucifer, who had spent the past thousand years moping around Cimmeria, arrived promptly. It was the first time the family had been together since the argument, and Gabriel hoped that finally his brother would come to accept that Father's orders were not the terrible tragedy he imagined them to be.

"You've done well, my sons," God said, once they were all present. "I have made a place in Heaven for the human souls to exist. Or rather, a lot of places for them to exist. Each one will have its own little reality, separate from our Heaven, but still a part of it. Soon it will be time to bring some of them here. But before that happens, there is another announcement I want you to make together to the rest of the angels."

"What announcement?" asked Raphael. Gabriel could feel his brother's reluctance. The last announcement hadn't gone down _too badly_, but there had been minor dissent in the ranks before the seraphs had stamped it out. Now, all angels accepted the situation with the vessels, but asking them to accept the human souls sharing their home was another matter entirely.

"The humans are my most treasured creation to date–"

"I thought _we_ were your most treasured creations?" Lucifer interrupted.

"You are my most _perfect_ creations. You are beautiful, powerful and obedient. But the humans possess something you cannot. They have souls. They have free will and imagination. And they will continue to grow and change, evolving over time. I want all of my children to love them as I do. I want my children to care for the humans, and love them even more than they love me."

"Father, you ask too much!" Lucifer said. Gabriel's mind was still reeling from his father's words. "How can you ask us to love those animals? They are small, and weak, and flawed. They kill each other, murdering out of greed and anger."

"Some of them, yes," Father agreed. "But they have the capacity to be _more_."

"How can you expect us... expect any angel... to love humans more than they love you, Father? They are just animals, and you are our creator."

"I expect you to do it because I have ordered it so," Father said. "The four of you will call an assembly of the host of Heaven, and you will tell them of my proposals. My children will love humanity. The souls of humans will come here when they die, and angels will care for them in Heaven."

"Yes, Father," Michael said. "We will see to it immediately."

Gabriel felt himself teleported by Michael, and all four brothers materialised on the hillside beneath the redwood tree. Lucifer turned to his brother immediately.

"Michael, you cannot do this!"

"I can, and I will," Michael replied calmly. "They are Father's orders, and I will not disobey."

"I don't understand!" Lucifer cried, in genuine distress. "How can you accept that humans are more perfect than we? That Father cares for them more? That he expects _us_ to care for them more than we care for him!?"

"I accept it because I have to," said the eldest arch-angel. "I don't need to understand Father's order to obey them."

"But you don't _have_ to obey them!"

"Yes, I do. And you do, too. We all do." Michael turned to address Raphael and Gabriel. "We correct disobedience amongst the lower ranks. Do you think Father would let us get away with what we punish in others? We must serve. We must be obedient. You know what happens to those who are not."

Gabriel shivered. _Leviathans_. His brothers had told him stories about them, and every angel had heard whisperings from the upper echelon. The Leviathans had been disobedient and destructive, so Father had imprisoned them in a place where they could do no harm.

"Raphael," said Lucifer, imploring his brother to hear him. "You dislike the humans as much as I do. You see them for the petty, murderous creatures they are. We do not have to follow Father's orders. Not this time. If we stand together, Father will see that he is wrong to ask this of us. He will change his mind."

Raphael looked at his older brother, speculation in his silver eyes. Then he shook his head sadly. "I don't believe he will, Lucifer. He asks us to love the humans more than we love him, and he asks the humans to love him more than they love each other. Does it not seem that he is testing us, testing our obedience, and our love for him?"

"Father has no need to test us! He made us. He knows that we love him unconditionally."

"If that is true, why is it so hard for you to follow his order? I may not like the humans, but if Father asks us to care for them, to tend their souls, to love them more than I love him, then I will obey to the best of my abilities. I will try. If I fail, it will not be through disobedience."

"And you, Gabriel?" Lucifer asked, turning to his youngest brother. "Will you stand with me? Or are you, too, going to crawl on your belly in service to the humans? Are you going to pick them over your own Father? Over your own brother?"

"I don't want to pick anything over anything else," Gabriel replied. There was an uneasy feeling inside him, a knot in the centre of his stomach. He tried to reason with his brother. "Dad _wants_ us to do this, Lucifer. Why don't we just give it a try? Maybe it won't be so bad."

"Fine," Lucifer said, his silver eyes full of cold anger. "You do whatever you want. Call your little assembly. Tell the host of Heaven that they're now second-class citizens, subservient to a race of animals. When you're done, I'll call my own assembly, and I'll tell them how it _really_ is."

"Lucifer," Michael pleaded with both his voice and his eyes, "please do not do this. Father will not stand by and let you risk all that he has worked for. I do not want him to lock you away, like he did the Leviathans."

"Then stand with me!"

"I can't. I have a responsibility to Father. To Heaven. To our brothers and sisters. If Father sees us disobeying, he will lock us all away, or he may simply get rid of us and start again, like he did when the Leviathans almost destroyed the Earth."

"I would rather be destroyed than live as a slave to a race of vicious animals."

With those final words, Lucifer teleported away. Gabriel looked to his brothers, hoping for guidance. But Michael looked sad, and a little angry, and Raphael looked worried.

"What should we do?" he asked the older angels.

"Now," Michael said, turning his gaze away from the spot where Lucifer had been standing, "we call an assembly."

* * *

_A/N: Hey, thanks for reading. It's not finished yet. When I realised I was marching towards 9k words, I decided to split the last chapter. Gabriel's chapter technically ends here (sorry about the length) and the last chapter will be told from the perspective of all the arch-angels, to bring it all together. Questions, comments, criticisms... you know what to do. Catch you next Friday for the end of this tale._


	5. The Beginning of the End

_Author's Note: Reader discretion advised – this chapter contains descriptions of torture._

* * *

The Beginning of the End

_War_

Gabriel looked down at the Heavenly host. They numbered thousands, a combination of seraphs, who were the minority, angels, and the tiny, human-sized cherubs Father had created more recently to work at matching humans with each other to provide vessels for other angels. The cherubs alone amongst the host were capable of acting on Earth without vessels, though they could do no more than make humans fall in love with each other.

It was the second time the host had assembled here in recent days. The first meeting, in which the three arch-angels had told the host of Father's plan for the humans, had not gone as well as it could have. Some of the angels, and a couple of the seraphs, had refused to kneel and swear to love humanity more than God, so Michael had smote them as an example to others.

Now it was Lucifer's turn to speak. Gabriel didn't know why Father allowed Lucifer to call this assembly; all he would do was stir up trouble amongst the rank and file. The angels themselves could not refuse to attend an assembly called by an arch-angel, even if that assembly _was_ for the purpose of telling them to disobey God's decree. As he stood there, watching the gathering from a distance, Michael appeared beside him.

"Why don't you stop this?" Gabriel asked his brother.

"Because Father has not told me to stop it, and nothing I can say will change Lucifer's mind."

"What if the angels listen to Lucifer? What if they choose to disobey, too?"

"Father will tell us what to do," said Michael, but he did not sound pleased about it.

There was a commotion from the host; Lucifer had appeared, shining more brightly than anything else in Heaven. He stood before the host, and they watched him in obedient silence.

"Brothers and sisters," Lucifer said. "I've called this assembly so that I can tell you the truth about the humans. They are not worthy of our love and our care. They are violent, primitive animals, and the only thing that makes them different to any other animal on the Earth is the fact that they possess souls. Were it not for these souls, our Father would care nothing for them. He would not bat an eye if they were wiped from the face of the planet.

"Yet despite these 'souls', they are still flawed. They are petty and cruel. They kill each other over minor disputes; for a scrap of food, for breeding rights, for a perceived insult. They are inferior in every way, and God asks us to bow down to them not because he loves them, but because he wants to replace us with them." There was a murmur of shock from the host, and Lucifer continued, gathering momentum. "I say that it is wrong. That we, as perfect beings, should have to bow down to no animals. I say that God is wrong, to ask it of us." He stepped forward, into the crowd of angels which parted before him. "I am standing up for our kind. I am saying 'no'. I will not bow to an animal, and I would ask none of you to bow either. Who amongst you will be brave enough to stand with me? Who amongst you refuses to live as a slave to a murderous beast?"

Gabriel turned back to Michael as the angels, seraphs and cherubs began to talk, to shout questions to the one known as the Morning-Star.

"Is it true?" he asked Michael. "Does Father really want to replace us with humans?"

"It doesn't matter if it's true," Michael replied. "It is Father's will that we love the humans and guard their souls in Heaven. We must obey, because he made us, and he can unmake us. For as long as we are obedient, we will continue to live. Even if we are not Father's favourites, he still loves us and expects us to be dutiful."

"What about them?" He gestured to the gathered host, which was much smaller now. Some of the angels had already left, shepherded away by their seraphs, perhaps afraid of retribution if they stayed. Some lingered, talking between themselves, afraid to leave, afraid to move closer. A small group was clustered around Lucifer, asking questions of him, basking in his light and his glory.

"We will deal with them at the appropriate time."

Gabriel nodded, and his brother disappeared. He wished Michael hadn't said 'we'. He didn't want to have to stand against his brothers and sisters. He didn't want Lucifer, his beloved older brother who had taught him so much when he had been younger and newly created, to think that Gabriel was choosing sides. But how could he disobey Father? And Michael, and Raphael... they were so sure that obedience was the right path. How could they, in their wisdom, possibly be wrong?

That was not the first assembly Lucifer called. The next time, not all of the host attended, but either Lucifer didn't notice, or he didn't care. Each time he called an assembly, fewer and fewer angels attended, until he was left with a small group who agreed with him and were ready to stand with him. Then, finally, the event Gabriel had been dreading finally happened. God called his sons to his garden.

By the time Gabriel arrived, Michael and Raphael were already there. Lucifer showed up not long after, standing apart from his brothers. Gabriel, still unwilling to pick sides, to choose one brother over the other, stood apart from the group in general, seeking shelter behind his father.

"Lucifer," God said. "I have not been blind to what you are doing, but I had hoped that by allowing you to speak your mind, you would grow out of this disobedient phase. But I can see that I was wrong to hope that, so now I am telling you; if you do not stop trying to turn angels against the humans, I will have no choice but to cast you out of Heaven, so that you can cause no further trouble. Go back to your followers, and tell them to disband, and obey me, or none of you will be welcome in Heaven any longer."

"Then you'll have to cast me out of Heaven," Lucifer said, his head held high, defiance in his silver eyes. He spoke with strength and conviction, no hint of fear or regret in his voice. Gabriel respected him for that, even though he did not agree with the sentiment behind the words. "For I will never love the humans more than I love you, and I will never stop speaking the truth."

Father sighed. "You leave me no choice, my son. Take your followers and go. If there is a single one of you left in Heaven by the end of this Earth-day, you will be destroyed beyond recall."

"I will go. But you have not heard the last of me. I will do whatever it takes to show you just how cruel and untrustworthy the humans are. In the end, you will all see that I am right."

Lucifer teleported away, and Gabriel felt the same shock resounding within him as was reflected in Raphael's eyes. Though Michael had always told them stories of the Leviathans, of what might happen to angels who disobeyed, deep down they hadn't truly believed it. Now, Lucifer was gone. Their brother, the most beautiful and beloved of all of God's children, was barred from Heaven, he and his followers destined to wander the universe, homeless, without a father, without a family.

"Father, surely there must be some other way," Michael said. His face was painted with desperation.

"You would like 'other ways' even less than this one," Father said sadly. "Michael, I want you to make sure that Lucifer leaves, and all of the traitorous angels along with him. None must be left in Heaven, to spread their hatred to their brothers and sisters."

Michael bowed his head, sadness radiating from his very being. It washed over Gabriel, tugging at something at the very core of his being. "Yes, Father."

Gabriel watched his brother go. He knew how much this was hurting Michael, how much it pained the eldest son of God to be forced to witness his brother's betrayal and banishment. And he knew that from this moment henceforth, Heaven would never be the same again.

o - o - o - o - o

Raphael wandered through the paradise of Heaven, his gaze running over the angels, weighing them up whenever he encountered them. The last century or two had been quiet, here. Lucifer and his followers had left, and now only good, obedient angels remained. He'd known something like this would happen, ever since he had met Michael and Lucifer on that hillside, long ago. He'd always known that Lucifer would eventually break something valuable. What he had broken now was Heaven itself.

Things had not been as quiet on Earth as they had in Heaven. Lucifer, and those loyal to him, had gone to Earth and, despite their hatred of humanity, taken vessels. They wandered the roads, from town to town, whispering in the ears of men and women, spreading lies and deceit, nurturing anger and hatred wherever it grew in the human soul. To Raphael, there was something almost poetic about it; that angels who hated should in turn encourage hatred within those whom they hated most.

Father did nothing about the lies, about the influence the fallen angels had with the humans. He had, long ago – and without telling any of his sons – created a metaphysical realm which he called Hell. It was to this place that human souls went when they refused to love and obey God, when they committed terrible sins. In a sense, it was almost like a Purgatory for the humans, except its doors were not locked shut because there was no need for a lock.

The humans had myriad names for the most beloved son of god; Devil, they called him. Satan. Prince of Lies. Some suspected his angelic nature and his fall from grace, whilst others thought he was some evil being conjured from the nothingness of creation. But wherever his name was spoken, it was in hushed whispers, with fearful glances. Some believed that merely speaking his name could invoke him. Had they used his true name, they would not have been wrong, for every time an angel's name was spoken by a human, that angel heard it, even from Heaven.

Whenever the fallen angels corrupted enough humans in a town or village, it was deemed beyond redemption by Father. And whenever the Earth needed cleansing from such sinful places, that task fell to the garrisons of angels who were stationed on Earth to watch and report back. Father proclaimed judgement, and the arch-angels passed his orders to the seraphs, who in turn instructed their garrisons of lesser angels. Sodom was the first city to be reduced to rubble, followed shortly after by Gomorrah. It was a sight beautiful and terrible to behold; dozens of angels hung in the sky, raining down fire and brimstone upon those cities of vice. Below, humans screamed, begging for forgiveness, for salvation. But salvation did not come, and forgiveness was granted only to those who were pure of soul, who had not given in to the corruption tainting their brethren.

Those cities were the first, but they were not the last. Admah and Zeboim followed; God's retribution was swift and without mercy. Sometimes, the fallen angels foolishly tried to resist, to protect their bastions of sin and corruption from holy retribution. When that happened, God instructed Raphael to go to the Earth and lead the garrisons himself. Usually, the arrival of an arch-angel was enough to cause the fallen fools to flee. Those who thought they could stand against him were invariably destroyed.

Upon the faces of the angels in Heaven he saw tiredness, and there was a darkness in their eyes that had not been there before. This war of attrition was taking its toll on them. Skirmish after skirmish they fought; some of them died, and those who survived were forever witness to the deaths of their brothers and sisters, to the violence wrought by the fallen angels. Angels lacked physical bodies, so they did not tire as humans and mortal animals did, but actions could weigh heavily on their celestial powers, and for the past two centuries they had experienced little but guerilla warfare. Fighting other angels was not easy for them. Destroying countless humans and wiping entire towns from the map was not easy for them. Every little act of destruction took its toll.

He left the host and wandered towards Father's garden. Today, Father was not there; probably away on a visit to Earth, or perhaps some far-flung corner of another galaxy. Gabriel remained in his place, and as Raphael silently approached, he looked at his brother, assessing him as he had assessed the lesser angels.

Father's youngest son was sitting by the side of a pool, his fingers trailing across the surface of the water, causing the dark green lily pads to bob up and down very slightly. God sometimes used the pool as a way of watching Earth without having to be present, and Raphael could tell by the look in his brother's eyes that Gabriel was using it for the same purpose now. His younger brother looked as tired as any angel; more tired, in fact. The bright glow of his body was starting to dull, and his silver eyes, so youthful and lively in the past, were full of sadness and regret.

"Hello, Gabriel," Raphael said, when he had almost reached his brother.

"Oh, hello, Raphael," Gabriel replied despondently. He glanced up briefly before returning his gaze to the water.

"Where is Father?"

Gabriel shrugged. "I don't know. I think Dad said something about taking some animals to Pandora. I'm just glad of the break."

Raphael nodded in understanding. God seemed determined to keep his youngest son out of the worst of the fighting, utilising Gabriel instead as his holy messenger. Whenever humans were straying too far from the path he had laid down for them, he sent Gabriel to issue warnings. Whenever a town was about to be judging and found wanting, Gabriel was sent to advise the faithful to leave with all haste. Whenever the orders were given to cleanse a town or city, Gabriel was usually the one to relay it to the seraphs and their garrisons. Raphael knew how much his little brother hated being the bearer of bad news, and he would have spared Gabriel if it was his choice, but they all had their part to play in God's plan.

Michael suddenly appeared in the garden, his arrival heralded by a flash of light. Both brothers looked up at him, and Raphael immediately saw the concern and agitation in his silver eyes.

"What is it, Michael?" he asked.

"It's Lucifer. He's found Hell."

Michael strode to the pool, waving his hand over the surface. The lilies parted completely. Gabriel, meanwhile, relinquished his place to his brother and shrugged.

"So? It's just an unhappy Heaven for corrupt human souls."

"It's much worse than that," Michael replied.

He waved his hand over the pond again, and an image appeared beneath the waters. Raphael stepped forward to examine it more closely. He saw a human woman standing in a crowd; her long dark hair tumbled down her back, and a shawl was clutched around her shoulders.

"Look deeper," Michael instructed.

Raphael obeyed, as did Gabriel. And when he truly _looked_, he saw something terrible to behold. The woman's face was an ugly, writhing, shifting mass of dark shadows, her eyes pure black, like a starless night sky. A halo of shadow surrounded her, but the humans appeared not to notice it. Raphael felt his lips curl back in disgust.

"What is it?" he asked his brother.

"Lucifer calls it 'demon'," Michael explained. "He has somehow twisted and corrupted the soul of a human to such an extent that all goodness and light has been wrung from it, leaving behind every sin known to man; greed, lust, envy... it is a beast of pure evil."

"But... why?" Gabriel asked, confusion replacing the tiredness in his silver eyes.

"Remember what he said? That he would do whatever it takes to prove how corrupt and untrustworthy humans are? I think this is his proof. I think this is the 'evidence' he needs to show Father he's wrong about the humans."

"Somebody is going to have to tell Father about this," Raphael said.

Gabriel stood up quickly. "I, ah, just remembered I have some orders to pass to the seraphs. Very important business." And he teleported away from the garden.

Raphael looked to Michael. There was still the same pain and anguish in his eyes that had been present from the moment he had been forced to cast his brother out of Heaven, but now there was something else looming in their luminescent depths. Anger. Well-masked fury and hatred. And Raphael understood. First, Lucifer had broken Heaven, forcing a split of the angels. Now, he had broken humans, chipping away the last vestiges of goodness from the soul, leaving nothing but taint and corruption behind. Lucifer had created an abomination. He was the father of a monster.

"I will tell God," Michael said.

"And I'll be with you, when you do," Raphael replied.

o - o - o - o - o

The King of Hell cast his eyes over his domain. Hell was not unlike Heaven; it was a malleable pocket of blended realities which, until he had discovered its location, had taken the form of a deep pit, into which the souls of the sinners and the unfaithful tumbled after death. Those souls, no matter how hard and how long they tried, could never get out of the pit; not even standing on each others' shoulders worked, for the pit became deeper the higher the tower of souls climbed.

The souls could not get out of the pit... at least, not on their own. The first one Lucifer had picked had been the soul of a woman. Lilith had been her name, and in life she had been a whore, a filthy, diseased temptress of men. A seducer of the flesh, a woman who thought she could hide corruption of the soul behind a painted mask. She had never believed that God loved her, and so he didn't. Here she had come, to the pit of Hell, just one sinner amongst many.

There had been no particular reason for him to choose that particular soul. He merely wanted a woman, because they were seen as the purer of the genders. They were supposed to be beautiful and fair and quiet; the opposite of their male counterparts. So Lucifer had picked her at random, grasping that shining, squirming soul in his silvery hand, stringing it out upon spider-like web so that it could be laid bare.

He had prodded at it and poked at it, trying to discover what made it work, what made Father so _fascinated_ with it. Admittedly, it was an interesting thing. He could stretch it and stretch it – and the soul of Lilith screamed, when he did that, a beautiful song of pain and suffering – but no matter how far he stretched it, it would never snap. He could also force it into the tiniest of containers, cramming it into a box so small that it was barely large enough to be seen, even by his eyes. And that made the soul scream, too.

One of his greatest achievements was his discovery that the soul was not some whole, complete thing, which gave the human instructions from birth. Quite the contrary. The soul was a tabula rasa. When a human was born, nothing at all was written on it. Humans made their _own_ instructions. They wrote their own souls. The human soul was a tablet for recording rules and laws which the human mind obeyed, and each one was different. What made each one different were the memories stored within the soul. The memories of happy times, and of sad. The memories of families, of being loved or unloved, cherished or hated, of friendships won and lost, of food eaten, drink drunk, of sexual encounters and life experiences in general. The memories were where the rules on the soul came from... and new memories could be made.

It wasn't easy. It took care and patience. Even he, with all of his power and strength, could not strip the memories from the soul. Oh, he could erase them temporarily from the mind of a living human, but they were still recorded on the tablet within. It wasn't quite the same. The soul clung to its memories, each one melded to another by some force he could not determine. So he couldn't get rid of the good memories. But he could overwhelm them with the bad.

From the soul of Lilith he called up every bad memory and experience she possessed. The hatred in the eyes of women and sometimes men who looked at her and saw her for what she was. The abuse of her flesh by the greedy and the lustful. The long nights spent alone, crying in sympathy and self-pity for herself. The days spent cursing God and his name for bringing this upon her, never realising that she had brought it upon herself.

These memories, and more, he had called up and forced her to live over and over and over again, until she begged for release. And he made some new memories of his own for her, too. He made her think she had a body again, and he tore it apart, piece by piece. He threaded hooks through her flesh and pulled them slowly apart, watching her skin stretch, hearing her shrieks of agony. He set her running through a forest and had beasts chase her, which fed upon her slowly as she lay dying on the cold hard ground. He placed her in a town of men whose only aim was to rape her time and time again. He invented a hundred, a thousand, a million memories to torment her.

For a long time she screamed, and it was like music to his ears. Every day, every torture, every scream, made that dull, tainted soul a little darker, a little blacker, until it was the absence of colour, like the cold empty space within galaxies. The weeping soul finally stopped screaming, and it sobbed.

_Please stop,_ she said. _Please stop, and I'll do anything you want. Anything._

"Anything?"

_Yes. I swear._

"Will you do to others what I have done to you?"

_Yes._

So he'd let her down from the web, that dark and blackened soul, and he'd hauled another soul from the pit and stuck him in her place. The new soul probably knew what was coming; he'd heard Lilith's screams for decades. Now, it was his turn

From there he had expanded rapidly. One soul turned another. Two souls turned two more. Four became eight. Each round of torturing brought new corrupt souls forth, and he gave a name to them. He told them they were called 'demons', that he had made them and he was their Father. They accepted this, and accepted the face of his vessel as his true face. Had they seen his real visage, they would have been destroyed; they were still humans, after all.

He kept the pit. He liked the pit. It was where new souls came first, to wait, to stew, to hear the screams of others and know that it was soon to be their fate too. But he changed some of the other aspects of Hell. The web of pain remained as the first place of torture. There was also the cave of fire, where souls were sealed inside to be burnt until they were crispy. There was the road of despair, where souls were chained down and eaten alive by vultures and lizards and foxes. And his finest work; the chamber of dreams. Souls flung into that chamber thought they were on Earth, or in Heaven. They thought they were safe. They lived lives and were sometimes happy... and then the curtain came crashing down, bringing with it the knowledge that they would never know anything but pain and despair.

With every soul that was turned, he expected a message from God. An apology. An admittance that he had been wrong. That humans _were_ flawed and corrupt, and that they could not be trusted. But no message came. No angels came. All they did was lay waste to the human towns and cities, trying to scour them from the Earth as if lancing a boil from the body. They would ultimately fail, those tiny fools, because no matter how many you killed, you couldn't stop humans from being humans.

"Lucifer!"

Samiaz, one of the lesser angels who had followed him in Heaven and on Earth, interrupted his assessment of his growing demon army. The fallen angel looked worried.

"What is it?" Lucifer asked.

"News from one of our informants in Heaven, Lord. The host has been assembled, and every angel has been told to arm himself. God has commanded Raphael and Gabriel to lead the garrisons in a purging of the Earth. Michael himself has been instructed to lead an army of the host here, to destroy you."

Hell reeled around him, and he struggled to stand upright. _Michael was going to kill him? Without even talking to him? Without giving him a chance to show his brother what he had achieved here? How right he was, about humans being corruptible and weak?_

"Why?" he whispered, more to himself than to Samiaz. But the lesser angel heard the question, and answered anyway.

"They have heard of our plans to take the Earth for ourselves. They fear we will strike at Heaven, next, bringing the demons to destroy God's realm."

_They thought he was going to strike at Heaven? At his __**brothers**__? At his __**Father**__? He would never do that. He loved his family. Even when the fallen angels skirmished with the garrisons, he did not partake in the fighting. Even though it meant losing some of his followers, he did not intervene. Despite what the host had been told by the arch-angels, Lucifer was not a monster. He would sooner harm himself than his family. Why couldn't they see? He was doing this __**for**__ them._

"Lord?" Samiaz said, looking concerned once again. "What should we do?"

Lucifer straightened up. What would happen, would happen. If Michael was coming for him, with an army of angels behind him, they would not find Lucifer cowering in fear like some pitiful, grovelling human. They would find him strong, and righteous. If this day was to be his last, he would not end it on his belly.

"Summon the others," he said, feeling the fire of anger inside him once more. "Michael will not find us an easy victory. He may have an army of angels, but my demons out-number them. You will lead our brothers on the field against Raphael, Gabriel and the garrisons. I will release the army of demons and they will spread across the land; the host of Heaven will be hard-pressed to stop them and fight you at the same time. I will remain here, and await Michael."

Samiaz left, still looking worried. He probably knew that his chances of surviving this battle were slim. The chances of _any_ of them surviving were slim. Though the demons out-numbered the angels, an angel's true form was fatal to them. And the garrisons alone, without the full host of Heaven behind them, were more numerous than the fallen. But that didn't matter. They were just a distraction. Something to keep Raphael and Gabriel busy whilst Lucifer dealt with Michael.

He didn't know if he could kill his brother. He didn't want to find out. But today, it was clear; one of them had to die.

o - o - o - o - o

_Two billion years of existence, and I am right back where I started_.

The thought came to Michael as he sat beneath the redwood tree on his favourite hillside in Heaven. Everything was quiet, not a single angel in sight. The heavenly host was busy preparing for battle. For the moment, he was alone. Just as he had been when Father had first created him.

He didn't want to do it. He didn't want to obey Father's orders. Lucifer was his little brother. He was the first angel Michael had ever known. His oldest friend and confidant. The one who could make him smile no matter what. For centuries Lucifer had been gone, and now he would never return, for the Morning-Star had committed a terrible crime. He had broken humanity beyond repair. The only thing stopping God from starting afresh with the Earth again, was the trickle of souls which made their way to Heaven each day. As long as even one pure, faithful soul remained on Earth, Father would leave the planet alone. He would give the humans a chance to grow and redeem themselves.

But that could never happen whilst Lucifer and his fallen angels were allowed to interfere. Already they had corrupted millions. They could not be allowed to take any more.

Another angel arrived on the hillside, and stood beside him in silence, surveying the green fields of Heaven. Michael looked up at his brother. Raphael was wearing the same shining white armour and carrying the same silver sword as himself. Those swords were the only things which could kill angels, and tonight, they had many to kill. Raphael and those in the garrisons would need to take vessels, to fight the fallen angels on Earth, but Michael had no such restriction. His destination was not Earth, but the deepest layers of Hell.

"Is all ready?" he asked, his voice dull and flat even to his own ears. He had no heart for this. He wanted to put it off for as long as possible.

"The host are gathering. The garrisons are circling their vessels," Raphael said, calm as ever. Then, there was a flicker of hesitation in his eyes before he spoke again. "I... cannot find Gabriel."

Michael briefly checked Heaven and Earth, looking for his youngest brother, but there was no sign of him.

"Gabriel is busy running an errand for me," he lied to Raphael. Today, he would have to confront one brother. To punish him for his crimes, under his father's orders. He couldn't punish _two_ of his brothers. It was too much. And Gabriel had always been the youngest, the most innocent, the one with no taste for fighting. Wherever he was, Michael hoped he was happy.

"Then we are ready."

Michael stood up, and looked out across Heaven one last time. Then, with a wave of his hand, he removed the tree forever. He lowered the hill, so that it no longer rose up and offered its fine view. In just a few short seconds, his personal haven, the place where he came to be alone, and watch, and think, was no more, and it would never be again.

"Can you do this, Michael?" Raphael asked. Concern for his brother flickered in his eyes.

"Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?" he countered, knowing that it sounded cold, but not caring. He couldn't afford to care. Very soon, good, obedient angels would be dying on the battlefield. Very soon, he would have to punish his brother. To do that, he had to make himself cold and hard, like one of the glaciers at the northern-most point of the Earth.

"Forgive me for doubting you," Raphael said. "I know you will not let us down. You are a good son. An obedient son."

_And for that, Father tests me with this command,_ Michael thought. God needed to know that he could trust the angels to guard Heaven and Earth, even against their traitorous brothers.

He did not reply to Raphael. Instead, he teleported both of them to where the host had gathered. They stood before him in perfect rows, each small, shining angel looking up at him, waiting to follow his lead. The seraphs were at the head of the procession; most of them would not be partaking in the battle – like the cherubs, their skills lay elsewhere – but they had come to observe, to watch from above and see to any human souls who made it here through the cross-fire.

He did not give a speech. There was no point. Every angel knew what had to be done. They had already been given their tasks, and they needed no further words to tell them how important this battle would be, how much hung in the balance. With measured calmness, he gestured to the one-thousand angels who would be accompanying him to Hell, and they fell in line behind him, a phalanx of warriors who would give their lives at a single command from him.

He nodded to Raphael, and his brother disappeared. He would be on Earth, now, giving the signal to the angels of the garrisons. They would take their vessels, and the battle for Earth would begin. That battle was down to Raphael, now, but Michael was not worried. Raphael could handle the responsibility. He would not turn betrayer, like Lucifer, or be crushed beneath the burden of command, like Gabriel.

With his brother gone, he turned to survey the host of angels behind him. A quarter of the host of Heaven would be following him into Hell. Another quarter were already stationed on Earth, separated into the garrisons Raphael would be leading, and the remaining half would stay behind in Heaven, to be sent off to whichever battle needed them most if things started to go wrong, and to protect Heaven itself, under the leadership of the seraphs, in case Lucifer sent demons to invade whilst the arch-angels were gone.

He deemed his warriors as ready as they would ever be. There was nothing more they could do to prepare. They would live or they would die, but they could not wait any longer. With every day that passed, Lucifer's demon army grew larger, and Father had finally decided that it posed enough of a threat to challenge Heaven.

Michael spread his wings, teleporting not only himself, but the legion of angels who followed him, to the Earth. They materialised in the sky above a dark, maw-shaped cave. This cave was one of the entrances to the underworld, and by passing through it could one reach Hell. Suspended in the air, his great wings supporting him, he looked at the mouth of the cave, which looked ready to swallow him whole. _I don't want to do this,_ he thought, making sure he kept his thought private from the host. _But I have no choice._

He gripped his sword more tightly, then leant forwards, his body finding the air currents, his wings propelling him forwards and down. Glancing behind, he saw the thousand tiny angels doing the same. They were little more than children, and he was leading them into Hell, possibly to their deaths. But he had no choice. He'd never had a choice. He could not betray Father and he could not betray Heaven, even though he wanted nothing more than to stop this battle and take Lucifer back home so that they could be a family again.

As the host approached the cave, it seemed to open up larger, to open wide enough for them to enter so that they could be swallowed in one gulp. Plunging into the great hole, Michael found himself in darkness, the only source of light being the silvery light of his body, and that of the host behind him; even together, they were not quite as bright as him. They followed him down, breaking formation as they were forced to dodge sharp rocks which stuck out from the sides of the cave, like fangs of some foul beast. As a river of silver water spilling over a falls, they flowed down, flooding the cave with the light of Heaven, and the darker the cave became, the more brightly they shone.

The smell of sulphur rose up from the depths, a blast of hot air accompanying it. Michael ignored both; he could detect the sulphur, but it did not trouble him, and the blast of scalding air was nothing compared to the heat of the newly-reformed Earth, eons ago. The smaller angels, however, were forced to dodge the blast; one was a little too slow, and his light was extinguished as the heat tore into the celestial energy of his body. The other angels were more wary, after that.

For a long time there was nothing but darkness ahead in that narrow, rocky gullet, but finally Michael saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and he steeled himself, knowing what had to come next. The light grew brighter, and the cave ended, and Michael and the host spilled out into Hell's stomach, their light stretching to every corner of that dark, fire-ridden place. Glancing briefly around, the arch-angel saw souls trying to clamber out of a pit; he saw souls stretched out on a web to be tortured into compliance; everywhere he looked he saw pain and suffering, and Lucifer's influence on what was meant to be nothing but a holding place for the unworthy. The Morning-Star had turned Hell into a mockery of everything Heaven stood for. Angered by his brother's trespasses, Michael turned to face Lucifer.

"Welcome to Hell, brother," Lucifer said, spreading his arms wide. "I'm sorry I couldn't have prepared a better reception for you, but I had to send my demons somewhere your army could not wipe them out with one blow."

"What have you done, Lucifer?" Michael asked, as he hovered in the air above his brother. Nothing in Heaven or on Earth – not even a direct command from God himself – could have made him touch down on the ground of Hell. The taint of the demons had spread to the very rocks themselves, and he felt repulsed by the thought of touching _anything_ here.

Lucifer smiled, a cold gesture which did not light up his eyes as it once would have done. "Scattered them into the wind. You and yours will never find all of them. They are to be my legacy. Consider them... something to remember me by."

"How did it come to this, Lucifer?" Michael asked in disgust.

"Ask Father. He's the one who cast me out. Who failed to see just how flawed his precious humans are. All I did was show them what they have the capacity to be. How do you think I managed this, brother? There is a demon inside every human, every single _one_ of them, just waiting to be released. And these are the beasts Father would invite into Heaven, to share our home with us? I would rather share my home with a pack of savage wolves. Wolves, at least, do not pretend to be what they are not."

What little sympathy Michael had kept for his brother faded at Lucifer's words. Perhaps he _was_ right. Perhaps, truly, the humans were flawed, corruptible beasts. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that Lucifer had disobeyed. He had betrayed Father, broken Heaven, shattered humanity... he had to be stopped.

"I'm sorry, Lucifer," he said. The silver sword felt cold in his hand, like a dagger of ice. "I take partial responsibility for all that has happened. Maybe I could have been a better brother. Maybe I could have done more to dissuade you from this course of action." Hell seemed to close in around them. The rest of the host, hovering in the air behind him, disappeared from his mind. There was only Lucifer, and him. "All my life, I have been cleaning up your messes. Covering for you when you made mistakes, or did things which upset others. But I can't do that anymore. I can't pretend that everything is going to be okay. Father has asked me to punish you for what you have done, so now it is time to face up to your crimes."

A blade appeared in Lucifer's hand, identical to the one carried by Michael. The younger brother gave an angry sneer. "Do you think I wasn't expecting this, _brother_?"

The time for words had passed. Michael struck at his brother, Lucifer's silver blade reaching up to meet his. The weapons clashed, lightning arced from the meeting of the swords, and thunder pealed around Hell, the sonorous boom echoing around the walls, causing the souls in the pit to cower in fear. Michael's sword was drawn back, and again he struck, with enough force to push his younger brother back by a pace when their weapons met once more. Each strike, each flash of lightning, each peal of thunder, tore through Michael's heart even as he tried to harden it, to protect himself for what had to come.

It was the ninth blow; he had counted each and every one, praying that the next one would not be the last... fearing that it would. On the ninth blow, Lucifer's sword was knocked from his grip, and it fell down, into an open cave of fire. Lucifer's eyes followed its descent, before snapping back to Michael. The younger brother stood up tall, his arms held out, displaying his defenceless body, still the brightest thing to be seen despite all the terrible things he had done.

"End it, Michael," Lucifer said. "Finish me."

Michael looked at his brother for a long moment, and then sheathed his sword. Surprise and confusion warred with each other in Lucifer's shining silver eyes.

"I'm not here to kill you, brother," he said.

"I don't understand."

Michael threw himself forwards, gripping his brother tight, pushing him over the precipice. He kept his grip as gravity pulled them down, into the pit of wailing souls. They hit the floor of the pit and it caved beneath their weight. Down they fell, Michael holding tight to his brother as Lucifer tried to spread his wings and halt their descent; it was a futile gesture. Lucifer was brighter than Michael, but he was smaller, not as strong. Held immobile by his older brother, he could do naught but struggle like a fly trapped in amber.

The cold hard floor of the deepest layer of the bowels of Hell rose up to greet the brothers. Michael saw it, and, gathering his strength, threw his brother down, letting go whilst he was still airborne, and then spread his wings, halting his own fall. Lucifer tumbled and spun out of control, landing on his back on the bare hard rock, too stunned, dazed by the impact, to move. His wings were splayed out beneath him, forced into odd angles by the sharp rocks on which he lay gasping for breath.

Michael flapped his wings and began to rise. The light of the Morning-Star grew dimmer and dimmer, until he was nothing but a speck in the deepest dark below. An image came unbidden into his mind. _Two brothers, young and innocent, lying on their backs on the bare rock of the Earth, looking up at the stars shining above them._

Up and up Michael rose, until he was back in the pit, where the damaged souls shied away from him and cried with fear. He ignored them, holding out both hands over the hole he had made during his fall. Across the hole he spun a web of rock and energy, a web that would take even an arch-angel a very long time to break.

"_Michael!_"

Lucifer's cry reached his ears, tugging at his heart, causing him to falter. His beautiful little brother, his closest friend, was alone and in pain. He wanted to go to his brother, despite the things Lucifer had done. He wanted to put his hand on his brother's shoulder and tell him it would all be okay, that he would look after him. But it was a desperate wish, and his words would have been a lie. He couldn't take care of his little brother any more. His little brother had become a monster, far worse than the humans he loathed.

_"Michael, no! Please!"_

He ignored his brother's screams as he finished spinning the web of the cage that would hold Lucifer until the end of time. His eyes would not move from the ground where only moments before had been a hole. Where only moments before had been his little brother. His body did not respond to his mind's commands to move, and eventually his mind gave up trying. He simply fell to his knees, his hands pressed against the bare rock, and in the back of his mind he thought he could still hear Lucifer screaming for him.

Brilliant white light filled Hell, like a thousand suns igniting all at once. Michael looked up, and through the shadows in his eyes that would have been tears had he been human, he saw six hundred angels standing at the lip of the pit, surrounding it entirely. They shone so bright with Heaven's power that they may even have eclipsed God himself. Then, one by one, their lights dimmed, their bodies fading back to their usual sparkling brightness, tiny stars to the sun they had briefly been.

When they were finished they stood there watching their commander, watching his fingers grip the rock which formed a single layer of the prison his brother was bound inside for eternity. And because he knew they needed to see him strong, Michael pushed himself to his feet.

An angel approached him, the only seraph to have been assigned to this excursion to Hell. She looked at him with sympathy before speaking. "It is done," she said. "The six-hundred seals have been placed on the cage, and Lilith has been bound to one of the deepest layers of Hell we could find."

"Thank you, Naomi," he said. "Take the host and join Raphael and the garrisons. You have demons to hunt down."

She gathered the angels and left, and the shadows of Hell closed in around him as the light of the angels departed. For a long time, Michael remained, staring at the bottom of the pit, ignoring the souls which pushed themselves against the bare walls and whimpered in fright. For a long time he heard a single word, screamed over and over again. "_Michael!_" And when he could finally bear it no longer, he turned his gaze to the world above. The battle was over. The fallen angels were defeated. The demons were being tracked down and killed one by one. It wasn't a fight anymore; it was a clean-up.

The arch-angel Michael stretched out his great wings, and returned to his Father in Heaven.

o - o - o - o - o

_What came after_

The snow shifted beneath his feet, each step producing a crisp, crunchy noise which reached his ears but travelled no further. The trees of the forest, towering pines and spruces with coats of dark green needles, wore a dense covering of white which muted all sounds and gave a feeling of stillness and isolation. This deep into winter, very few animals were out and about, but the forest path was still well-worn, the snow compacted except what had fallen during the last brief fall.

He reached a clearing, and immediately knew it was not natural. This clearing had once been a gathering place of the fairy-folk, though they had long since abandoned it. They liked to move around a lot, fairies, and they mostly went where the people were.

A wolf stepped out from the forest, loping into the tree-less circle, the snow silent beneath its large paws. The creature was huge, one of the largest species of wolf to walk the Earth, and its agouti fur was peppered with darker bands of black and lighter patches of silver. It looked at him with golden eyes, its pink tongue lolling from its mouth as it panted.

"There you are," he said to the wolf. "That was too easy."

The creature transformed, standing upright on two legs. Its fur changed appearance, altering to thick leather clothing, sturdy leather boots, and a reindeer-pelt coat that was trimmed with wolverine fur around the hood. The paws changed to hands and the grey muzzle retracted into a pink face, becoming a human nose.

Gabriel found himself looking at a perfect replica of his own vessel. It had taken him years to find his true vessel, years of running and hiding, fearful that his brothers would catch up to him if he stayed for too long in one place. Years of burning his way through lesser vessels, having six months with them at best before they deteriorated behind his ability to repair. But this one... this vessel was different. This one, with its floppy brown hair and hazel eyes, he could keep forever.

"I didn't want to make it too hard for you," Loki replied with a grin. "I've heard how unimaginative you celestials are. Besides, you can hardly talk; it took me only three days to find you hiding behind that waterfall in India."

"Next time I won't be so easy to find," Gabriel assured him. "I'm just getting warmed up."

"Well, for the moment, you'll have to get cooled down. I've got a... thing... to attend."

"A thing?" he prompted.

"Odin's called a family meeting. He's... concerned... about this Christianity thing that's all the rage in the south."

"You haven't told them about _me_, have you?" he asked the trickster.

Loki scoffed. "Please, I still have _some_ self-respect. If my family hear I've been hanging out with an _angel_, I'll lose any credibility I have. No offence, Gabriel. As far as celestials go, you're alright by me."

"Thanks," he said, letting out a small sigh of relief. In truth, he had enjoyed his time with Loki. The trickster-god of the Norsemen was much more fun than the angels, and he was a surprisingly good teacher, for a pagan. "How long will your meeting last for?"

"I have no idea. Odin does like to waffle, especially when he's had a drink. But I intend to make a little fun for myself."

"Oh? What have you planned?"

Loki smiled, his lips parting mischievously. "First I'm going to steal Mjölnir from Thor. He has an unhealthy attachment to that hammer... I think he might be compensating for something. Then I'm going to seduce Odin's wife, Frigga. She's quite the looker, for a frost-queen. Also, I intend on spiking Baldr's mead with moonshine. He's such a self-righteous prick, he deserves to get drunk and make a fool out of himself."

Gabriel wandered over to one of the trees, and saw a bare, loose branch, one end a little sharper, as if it had purposely been fashioned to a point. He picked it up and tossed it into the air, watching it spin before catching it. "Your family meetings sound like a lot more fun than mine," he said, walking over to his friend and mentor, still playing catch with the stick.

"To be fair, your family _are_ a bunch of freedom-hating fanatics," Loki shrugged. "I don't hold it against you."

Gabriel smiled. "Thanks. He stopped spinning the branch, and looked into his own face. "Y'know, Loki, I really appreciate everything you've done for me; helping me to hide from my brothers, showing me some of your tricks, teaching me how to get inside the mind of a human. I know I have no right to ask it, but there's one more thing you could do for me. If it's not too much trouble, of course."

"Oh? And what's that?"

The branch, soaked in the dried blood of Loki's last victim, was thrust forward, into the trickster's chest. Gabriel felt it pierce the demi-god's rib-cage, felt the tip strike his heart, knew the blood was working its way through Loki's body like a poison. The trickster's hazel eyes looked at him, full of pain and confusion, and Gabriel caught the god's body as it crumpled, and he lay his friend down on the cold, snow-covered ground.

"Why?" the trickster asked, blood covering his lips, trickling from one corner of his mouth.

"I'm sorry," Gabriel said. And he truly _was_ sorry that it had to end this way. "But now I need to be you. It's the only way I can hide from my family."

The trickster's eyes flickered, closing as his body expelled its last, rattling breath. Gabriel stood up, looking down at the corpse, the branch still sticking out of its chest, and felt his hands, sticky with blood, close into fists of their own accord. He had not been certain it would work. He hadn't been sure about the shaman's claim of how to kill a god. He hadn't known if he could do it. But now that it was done, he felt relief, and a little guilt. Loki was the first friend he'd ever had, and now he was lying dead in a fairy-circle. But this was the way it had to be. It was a small price to pay, for the freedom he desired.

With a wave of his blood-covered hand he disintegrated the body of the god, and removed the blood from his hands and clothes. Then he turned his gaze north, to where the other little gods were waiting. The time of Gabriel the arch-angel was over. Now he had the life of a trickster to live.

_- The End -_

* * *

_Author's Note: I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I wish I could have made Lucifer a little more sympathetic, but you can't win 'em all I guess. Thanks to you guys who have given me feedback; your time and your words are truly appreciated._

_So, what next? Do you like Meg? I've written a back-story for her, which I hope you'll enjoy. It's a bit sad. First of five chapters will be up next Friday. Hope to see you then!_


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